Photo credit: B. Schmitz-Sieg — File:Friedrich Bergius.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY 4.0
Friedrich Bergius
1884–1949 · Germany · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1931
German chemist who pioneered high-pressure chemistry, converting coal into liquid fuel and wood into sugar.
Nobel Prize work
Shared the prize with Carl Bosch for inventing and developing chemical high-pressure methods. Bergius showed that coal can be liquefied under high hydrogen pressure and that wood can be hydrolysed into sugars, laying the groundwork for synthetic fuels.