Emma Maria Wolffhardt (1899–1997): Head of Research at BASF #

As the first woman at BASF to head a research area of her own, Emma Maria Wolffhardt worked for the company from 1925 to 1960. At its ammonia laboratory, she developed, among other things, a knock-resistant aviation fuel.

Emma Maria Wolffhardt, born on 27 July 1899, studied chemistry at the University of Würzburg and then worked as an assistant at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. She completed her doctoral thesis under Stefan Goldschmidt (1899–1971), a student of the renowned chemist and Nobel laureate Adolph von Baeyer (1835–1917). Goldschmidt, who conducted research into the chemistry of radicals, had been appointed an unsalaried professor in Würzburg in 1923, but shortly afterwards accepted a position in Karlsruhe as Head of organic chemistry.

Wolffhardt joined the chemical company BASF in Ludwigshafen in July 1925. Her first post was in the literature office of the main laboratory. She soon successfully applied for an assistant position with Alwin Mittasch (1869–1953), then Head of the ammonia laboratories. Mittasch was known for his work on catalysts for ammonia synthesis.

In 1940, Wolffhardt became the first woman at BASF to head a research area of her own. She was the first researcher to recognise the value of the space-filling model for developing catalysts. The space-filling model, devised a few years earlier by the physicist Herbert A. Stuart (1899–1974), illustrates the three-dimensional shape of molecules. It represents the atoms in a molecule as spherical segments, with different chemical elements shown in different colours and the atom sizes, bond angles and bond lengths reflecting their actual proportions. Wolffhardt used the model primarily to understand and improve organic synthesis. This enabled her to produce significant quantities of 2,2,3-trimethylbutane (triptene) for the first time, a high-grade, knock-resistant aviation fuel with an octane rating of 112.

In BASF’s history, Wolffhardt was not only the first female academic to head her own research area, but also the first woman there to celebrate 25 years of service. After marking this anniversary in 1950, she continued her research in the BASF ammonia laboratory for another ten years, until her retirement in 1960.

Emma Maria Wolffhardt died in Heidelberg on 12 November 1997, aged 98.

Literature

E. Wolffhardt, Chemische Berichte 80, No. 1, 1947, pp. 64–76

R. Tobies (ed.): “Despite all the male culture”: Women in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, Campus Verlag, 1997, pp. 58 f.

BASF SE: The women of Anilin, brochure, Ludwigshafen, 2017 (https://www.basf.com/global/de/who-we-are/history.html)

Emma Wolffhardt and colleagues in the ammonia laboratory, c. 1951