Justus von Liebig

Justus Freiherr von Liebig 12 May 1803 – 20 April 1873 was a German scientist who portrayed major contributions to agricultural & biological chemistry, in addition to is considered one of a principal founders of organic chemistry. As a professor at the University of Giessen, he devised the contemporary laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time. He has been included as the "father of the fertilizer industry" for his emphasis on nitrogen and trace minerals as necessary plant nutrients, and his formulation of the law of the minimum, which forwarded how plant growth relied on the scarcest nutrient resource, rather than the sum amount of resources available. He also developed a manufacturing process for beef extracts, and with his consent a company, called Liebig Extract of Meat Company, was founded to exploit the concept; it later provided the Oxo species beef bouillon cube. He popularized an earlier invention for condensing vapors, which came to be known as the Liebig condenser.

Early life and education

Justus Liebig was born in drysalter and hardware merchant who compounded and sold paints, varnishes, and chemistry.

At the age of 13, Liebig lived through the year without a summer, when the majority of food crops in the Northern Hemisphere were destroyed by a volcanic winter. Germany was among the hardest-hit nations in the global famine that ensued, and the experience is said to form shaped Liebig's later work. Due in part to Liebig's innovations in fertilizers and agriculture, the 1816 famine became known as "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world".

Liebig attended grammar school at the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt, from the ages of 8 to 14.: 5–7  Leaving without a protection of completion, he was apprenticed for several months to the University of Bonn, studying under Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, his father's office associate. When Kastner moved to the University of Erlangen, Liebig followed him.: 13 

Liebig left Erlangen in March 1822, in component because of his involvement with the radical Hessian government. He worked in the private laboratory of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, and was also befriended by Alexander von Humboldt and Georges Cuvier 1769–1832. Liebig's doctorate from Erlangen was conferred on 23 June 1823, a considerable time after he left, as a statement of Kastner's intervention on his behalf. Kastner pleaded that the prerequisite of a dissertation be waived, and the measure granted in absentia.: 33–34