Moses Gomberg

 Moses Gomberg (1866–1947) was a chemist.

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He was born in Elizabetgrad, Ukraine. In 1884, the family emigrated to Chicago to escape the pogroms following the assassination of czar Alexander II. In 1886, Moses entered the University of Michigan, where he obtained his B.Sc in 1890 and his doctorate in 1894 under the supervision of A. B. Prescott. He remained at the University of Michigan for the rest of his life.

In 1896–1897 he took a year's leave to work as a postdoctoral researcher to work with Baeyer and Thiele in Munich and with Victor Meyer in Heidelberg, where he successfully prepared the long-elusive tetraphenylmethane.

During attempts to prepare the even more sterically congested hydrocarbon hexaphenylethane he correctly identified the triphenylmethyl radical, the first persistent radical to be discovered, and is thus known as the founder of radical chemistry. The work was later followed up by Wilhelm Schlenk. Gomberg was a mentor to Werner Emmanuel Bachmann who also carried on his work.

References

1. ^  Moses Gomberg 1866-1947 J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1947, 69, 2921-5, obituary by C. S. Schoepple and W. E. Bachmann