Charles Adolphe Wurtz

Charles Adolphe Wurtz was an Alsatian French chemist. He is best remembered for his decades-long advocacy for the atomic theory and for ideas about the structures of chemical compounds, against the skeptical opinions of chemists such as Marcellin Berthelot and Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville. He is well known by organic chemists for the Wurtz reaction, to form carbon-carbon bonds by reacting alkyl halides with sodium, and for his discoveries of ethylamine, ethylene glycol, and the aldol reaction. Wurtz was also an influential writer and educator.

26 November 1817

Born on the same birth day (26 November): Albert Dieudonné • Alice Herz-Sommer • Brian Schneider • Edward Hastings, 2nd Baron Hastings • Georgios Tzavellas • Konstantinos Filippidis • Marian Mercer • Rich Little • Stephan Andersen • Vicki Pettersson

Born in the same month (November 1817): Baháʼu'lláh • John Bigelow • Theodor Mommsen • William Ellery Channing (poet)