Chemist Georg Wittig, 1979 Nobelist, Dies
From Times Wire Services
HEIDELBERG, West Germany —
Georg Wittig, who shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1979 for his work in the chemistries of boron and phosphorous, research important to the development of immune-resistant pesticides, has died.
A spokesman at Heidelberg University, where Wittig taught until 1974, said he was 90 and died Wednesday night.
He won the Nobel Prize in 1979 with American chemist Herbert Brown for the “Wittig-Synthese,” a process of producing chemical compounds called olefins. He and Brown hold most of the patents in the organic chemistry of boron and phosphorous.
