BAEYER, brer, Adolph von, a pioneer of German chemistry: b. Berlin, 31 Oct. 1835; d. Munich, 24 Aug. 1917. A pupil of Bunsen at Heidelberg, he spent some years in Berlin as a private tutor, where he came under the in fluence of A. W. von Hoffmann, whose pupil, Sir W. H. Perkin, discovered mauve, the first aniline dye. In 1872 Baeyer was appointed professor of chemistry and director of the new chemical laboratones in Strassburg, where many famous chemists studied, such as Emil Fischer, C. Graebe and C. Liebermann— the discoverers of synthetic madder (or alizarine), which effectually killed the French madder in dustry. In 1875 he succeeded to Liebig's chair in Munich, where he built the new Chemisches Institut, in which two generations of organic chemists of all nationalities have received their training. Baeyer was one of the fathers of modern organic chemistry, much of which rests on the foundations laid by himself and the many distinguished chemists trained under his guidance. In the technical world he helped in
a marked degree to build up the position which Germany held before the war in the chemical industry. His name is inseparably associated with the artificial production of indigo, on which he began his researches in 1865. His patents were acquired in 1880 by the Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik and the Hoechst Farbwerke, which concerns carried out conjoint research for 18 years, spending about $5,000,000 on the problem. Two satisfactory processes were finally developed for the naanufacture of indigo from coal-tar products, one starting from naphthalene and the other from benzene via aniline. Baeyer was awarded the Davy medal for the Royal Society (England) in 1881 for his researches in indigo and receive the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1905. His works were published at Brunswick (2 vols., 1905).