The Manchester “red chemist” whose work on paraffins helped found organic chemistry
The son of a joiner in Darmstadt, he took part as a teenager in the 1848–1849 revolution in Baden. After training as a pharmacist he turned to chemistry under the influence of Bunsen’s lectures and in 1859 moved to Manchester, where he worked at Owens College. His systematic work on the paraffins (alkanes) made him professor of organic chemistry in 1874 and a Fellow of the Royal Society. A close friend of Marx and Engels, he advised them on natural science, and he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1889.
Activities and affiliations
- 1859–1892
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1889–1892
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
Science and technology
Career Timeline
- 1859Private assistant to Henry Roscoe in Manchester
- 1861Demonstrator at Owens College
- 1871Fellow of the Royal Society
- 1874–1892.06.27Professor of organic chemistry, Owens College
- 1889–1892.06.27Member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Friendship with Marx and Engels
Schorlemmer met Engels in Manchester by March 1865 at the latest and came to know Marx in 1868. Both consulted him on scientific questions, and his sociological analysis of the history of chemistry influenced their views on the development of the natural sciences. When he did not visit Germany he spent his holidays with them in London, and he was one of the thirteen people at Marx’s funeral in 1883.
When he died of a lung disease in Manchester in 1892, Engels wrote an obituary in Vorwärts saying that he had been open about his communism, had esteemed Hegel when Hegel was “much despised”, and that what was known about the paraffins was owed mainly to him.