Wilhelm Steinkopf
Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf (28 June 1879 – 12 March 1949) was a German chemist. Today he is mostly remembered for his work on the production of mustard gas during World War I. Life Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was born on 28 June 1879 in Staßfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony in the German Empire, the son of Gustav Friedrich Steinkopf, a merchant, and his wife Elise Steinkopf (née Heine). In 1898 he began studying chemistry and physics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1899 he moved to the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe (today the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), where he finished his studies with a degree as Diplomingenieur in 1905. In Karlsruhe, he also met his future colleagues Fritz Haber and Roland Scholl. After receiving his Doctor of Science and eventually his Habilitation in 1909, he worked as an associate professor at the TU Karlsruhe until 1914, when he volunteered for service in World War I. In 1916 Fritz Haber, who was now the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (KWIPC, today the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society) in Berlin, invited Steinkopf to join his institute as the head of a team devoted