Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer was a German chemist, pharmacist and businessman. He synthesised many organic compounds and it was he who proposed the modern formula for naphthalene. He is probably best known to the lay chemist as the person who invented the eponymous Erlenmeyer (conical) flask.

Richard Erlenmeyer was born in Wiesbaden, the son of an evangelical pastor. Early in his career, like many others, he had intended to study medicine and, starting his studies in Gießen, he was smitten by Liebig's lectures in chemistry, causing him to switch disciplines. However, as competition for places in Liebig's laboratory was fierce, he wandered between different research groups until his funds became exhausted and his father insisted that he get a 'useful qualification' such as pharmacy. This later came back to haunt him when Hermann Kolbe jibed: Once a pharmacist, always a pharmacist..

Erlenmeyer eventually found himself working on fertilisers in Bunsen's laboratory in Heidelberg. As Bunsen would not allow any of his Associates to do any teaching, Erlenmeyer hit upon using some of his wife's money to take out a mortgage on a large shed, which he converted into a laboratory and began taking private students. During this period Erlenmeyer also travelled, meeting in London, amongst others, the ambitious young August Kekulé who, shortly afterwards, took up a post in Heidelberg.

For a time, Kekulé and Erlenmeyer lectured together, and Erlenmeyer eventually took over from Kekulé the editorship of Zeitschrift der Chemie. This plunged him into controversial debates in theoretical chemistry whereby he sided against the likes of Kolbe and Berzelius, and with Kekulé, Williamson and the Russian chemist, Butlerov, who argued that connectivity lay at the heart of organic chemistry. Thus, Butlerov was the first to contend that every organic compound must have a distinct structure, whereby Erlenmeyer took AS Couper's ideas a stage further in suggesting that carbon atoms could be linked by single, double or triple bonds. His connection with Butlerov also ensured that he received a steady stream of students, including Borodin (the composer who also discovered the 'aldol condensation') and Markownikoff.

Amongst many other contributions, Erlenmeyer elucidated the fused triple-ring aromatic structure of naphthalene, and showed that alpha-unsaturated alcohols rearranged to form aldehydes. He also set up a number of more or less successful businesses including dyestuff and fertiliser plants. More prosaically, it was he who invented the asbestos gauze, crucial in the days of pre-pyrex glassware to prevent thermal shock from a roaring Bunsen flame.

The Erlenmeyer Flask

Being quintessentially a practical chemist, it was in this vein that, in 1861, Erlenmeyer devised his eponymous flask which, with its wide bottom, was perfect for heating solutions and facilitating operations such as recrystallisation. Furthermore, its sloping sides made it possible to swirl solutions, for example, during a titration, without slopping. The flat bottom also had the advantage of giving the solution a uniform colour throughout, thus making it easier to determine the end-point of a titration. Modifications such as a ground glass joint at the top, or a side-arm vastly increased the number of uses for this device.