Franz Joseph Emil Fischer

Franz Joseph Emil Fischer was a German chemist, born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1877 and died in Munich in 1947. He was the founder and first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research in Muelheim and is known for the discovery of the Fischer-Tropsch process. In 1925 he and Hans Tropsch found how to produce liquid hydrocarbons from carbon monoxide and hydrogen over a metal catalyst at temperatures of 150 to 300 degrees Celsius. In 1930 he and Hans Schrader developed the Fischer assay, a standardized laboratory test for the oil yield of oil shale. He received the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1936 and retired from the institute in 1943.