Dr. Alfred Bader, renowned chemist, art collector and benefactor visited the Department on September 11, as part of the 95th Anniversary Celebration of the St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society. He spoke on: "Richard Anshutz, Archibald Scott Couper and Josef Loschmidt: A Detective at Work". He provided evidence that Couper was the first person to describe the tetravalency of carbon, and not Kekule' and also that Loschmidt, best known for his calculation of Avagadro's Number, was the first to describe the cyclic structure of benzene and made innumerable contributions to chemistry prior to turning his attention to physics.
Dr. Alfred Bader is founder of the Aldrich Chemical Company. Anyone who does preparative chemistry has a copy of the Aldrich catalogue, has collections of Aldrichimica Acta, with its Dutch master painting covers and invaluable material inside for chemists. The motto of the company is "chemists helping chemists in research and industry"
Dr. Bader is a well known chemist in his own right, educated at Harvard, where he did his Ph.D degree with Louis F. Fieser, but he is much better known for providing rare chemicals through his former company, through his passion for and expertise in art and his for generosity. He spent time in industry with PPG prior to establishing Aldrich in 195, in Milwaukee.
He won the Charles Lathrop Parson Award of the ACS in 1995. The award recognizes outstanding public service by a member of the American Chemical Society.
He sponsors the ACS Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry and Aldrich sponsors several awards including that for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry. With Aldrich he established the ACS Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods.
Dr. Bader was born in Vienna, Austria, and was a refugee from Nazi persecution, spending time in England, and Canada prior and studying engineering chemistry at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario where he graduated with a degree in Engineering Chemistry in 1945, prior to going to Harvard. He has served as president, CEO, chairman and chairman emeritus of Sigma-Aldrich. In 1962 Dr. Bader became both collector and dealer in fine art when he created "Alfred Bader Fine Arts" and began operating an art gallery in the Astor Hotel in Milwaukee. He has published widely on chemistry, art and the Bible.