Johannes Thiele

Who was Johannes Thiele?

Friedrich Karl Johannes Thiele was a German chemist and a prominent professor at several universities, including those in Munich and Strasbourg. He developed many laboratory techniques related to isolation of organic compounds. In 1917 he described a device for the accurate determination of melting points, since named Thiele tube after him.

Thiele was born in Ratibor, Prussia, now Racibórz, Poland. Thiele studied mathematics at the University of Breslau but later turned to chemistry, receiving his doctorate from Halle in 1890 . He taught at the University of Munich from 1893 to 1902, when he was appointed professor of chemistry at Strasbourg.

He developed the preparation of glyoxal bis.

After Kekulé's proposal for benzene structure in 1865, he suggested a "Partial Valence Hypothesis", which concerned double and triple carbon-carbon bonds with which he explains their particular reactivity. In 1899 this led to the prediction of the resonance that existed in benzene, and he proposed a resonance structure, by using a broken circle to represent the partial bonds. Later this problem was completely solved with the advent of quantum theory.