Felix Hoffmann

  Felix Hoffmann (January 21, 1868 – February 8, 1946) was a German chemist, who first synthesized medically useful forms of Heroin and Aspirin. He was born in Ludwigsburg and studied Chemistry in Munich. In 1894 he joined the Bayer pharmaceutical research facility in Elberfeld.

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He is best known for having synthesized acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) on August 10, 1897 for the first time in a stable form usable for medical applications. Bayer marketed this substance as Aspirin. Eleven days later, Hoffman invented Heroin, the trademark name used by Bayer, which marketed it as cough medicine from 1898 to 1910.^[1]

Both substances had been synthesized earlier, but not in forms that could be used for medication. ASA had first been synthesized by Frenchman Charles Frédéric Gerhardt in 1853, and diacetylmorphine (that is, heroin) by C.R.A. Wright, a British chemist in 1873.

Shortly after these discoveries, he changed to the pharmaceutical marketing department, where he stayed until his retirement in 1928.

In 2002, he was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame.

See also

• Arthur Eichengrün

References