1-148-982 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Emil Fischer, German organic chemist, 1904. Photographed with scientific instruments. In 1874 he discovered the first hydrazine base, phenylhydrazine, but he is famous for his studies of the purines and the sugars, conducted between 1882 and 1906, during which he realised that various substances like adenine, caffeine and uric acid were from one homogenous group, and that the parent substance was purine (which he synthesised in 1898). His work on sugars changed the understanding of these compounds and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1902.