Anton Köllisch (16 March 1888 – September 1916) was a German chemist who, whilst working at Darmstadt for pharmaceutical giant Merck, first described the synthesis of the chemical MDMA. ^[1]

Life and work

In 1911, Köllisch published his doctoral dissertation on the topic of indole synthesis from hydrazones under Otto Diels at the University of Berlin. ^{[2] [3]}

While at Merck, Dr Köllisch was involved in investigating syntheses for methylhydrastinine and hydrastinine. A procedural patent was filed on Christmas Eve 1912 relating to these syntheses, which mentioned MDMA without name as a chemical intermediate. ^[1]

He was killed in the First World War.

References

Bibliography

• Germany, Kaiserliches Patentamt, Patentschrift Nr 274350, http://mdma.net/merck/mdma-patent1.html
• Benzenhöfer, U; Passie, T (January 2006). "The early history of Ecstasy". Nervenarzt. 77 (1): 95–6, 98–9. doi: 10.1007/s00115-005-2001-y. PMID  16397805.
• Adam, David. Truth about ecstasy's unlikely trip from lab to dance floor: Pharmaceutical company unravels drug's chequered past, Guardian Unlimited, 2006-08-18.
• Freudenmann, R. W.; et al. (September 2006). "The origin of MDMA (ecstasy) revisited: the true story reconstructed from the original documents" (PDF). Addiction. 101 (9): 1241–1245. doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2006.01511.x. PMID  16911722.