WINKLER, LAJOS WILHELM

(b. Arad, Hungary [now Rumania], 21 May 1863; d. Budapest, Hungary, 14 April 1939)

chemistry.

One of nine children of Vilmos Winkler, a Wholesaler, Winkler worked as an assistant pharmacist in a chemist’s shop in Arad and then studied chemistry and pharmacology at the University of Budapest. He received the degree in pharmacology in 1885 and soon afterward was offered an assistant professorship at the university’s chemical institute by Károly Than, a former student of Bunsen and a founder of scientific chemistry in Hungary.

Research at the institute was then focused primarily on the chemical composition of Hungarian mineral waters, the main concern being dissolved gases, Winkler’s own interest centered on the quantitative determination of dissolved oxygen in water, which provided the subject of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Budapest in 1888. The Winkler method, as it is now known, laid the foundation of his scientific reputation.

Winkler subsequently participated in the preparation of volumes II–IV of the Pharmacopoeia Hungarica, of which Than was editor-in-chief. For this work he developed analytical methods that can be used even in simply furnished laboratories, and his practical sense and keen critical ability enabled him to create a number of techniques of enduring value, in particular his colorimetric titration method of determining the contamination of water by metals, such as iron, lead, and copper, and by ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, silica, and other contaminants, and his method of determining iodine concentration. In 1896 he was elected corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and, in 1922, full member. Than’s department was death in 1908; Winkler became professor of analytics and pharmacology, as well as director of the first chemistry department at the University of Budapest.

Winkler opened new areas in analytical chemistry, and the methods that he elaborated were summarized in Die chemische Analyse (1931–1936). In addition to his work in high-precision gravimetry and the analysis of gases, water, and pharmaceuticals, he also investigated the absorption coefficients of gases in various solvents and devised instruments for their measurement that still provide reliable data. The results of his work on gas, which covered nearly twenty years, became internationally known with their inclusion in Hans Landolt and Richard Börnstein’s Physikalisch-chemische Tabellen (1883), replacing Bunsen’s values. His figures have not been superseded.

To a considerable extent, the success of Winkler’s methods for the determination of halogens can be regarded as responsible for the subsequent development of halogen analysis as an almost exclusively Hungarian field of investigation. and many of his pupils conducted work in that area. Winkler’s techniques reflect the importance of strictly maintaining the prescribed experimental conditions in all reproducible methods. The application of the fundamental principle of reproducibility–in analytical chemistry as in the natural sciences–constitutes one of his most outstanding accomplishments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A list of more than 200 of Winkler’s words, compiled by L. Szebellédy was published in Winkler Lajos dr. emlékezete (Budapest, 1940), 17–26. His writings include his dissertation, “Die Bestimmungen des in Wasser gelösten Sauerstoffs,” in Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft,21 (1889), 2843–2855; Die chemische Analyse, XXIX, XXX (Stuttgart 1931–1936); and Ausgewählte Untersuchungsverfahren für das chemische Laboratorium 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1931–1936).

On Winkler’s life and work, see E. Schulek, “L. W. Winkler, 1863–1939,” in Talanta,10 (1963), 423–428.

I. de Graaf Bierbrauwer-Wurtz