Emma Maria Wolffhardt (1899–1997): Research Director at BASF

Emma Maria Wolffhardt was the first woman at BASF to head her own research field. She served the company from 1925 to 1960 and, among other achievements, developed a knock-resistant aircraft fuel in its ammonia laboratory.

Emma Maria Wolffhardt, born on 27 July 1899, studied chemistry at the University of Würzburg and subsequently worked as an assistant at Karlsruhe Technical University. 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 researched the chemistry of radicals, had obtained an unsalaried professorship in Würzburg in 1923, but shortly afterwards accepted a call to Karlsruhe as Head of Organic Chemistry.

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

From 1940 onwards, Wolffhardt was the first woman at BASF to head her own research field. She was the first researcher to recognise the value of the space-filling model for developing catalysts. The space-filling model, designed a few years earlier by the physicist Herbert A. Stuart (1899–1974), illustrates the three-dimensional shape of molecules. It represents the atoms of a molecule as sections of spheres (calottes), with the various chemical elements shown in different colours and the atomic sizes, bond angles and bond lengths corresponding to the actual proportions. Wolffhardt used the space-filling model primarily to understand and improve organic synthesis. In this way, she was the first to succeed in producing significant quantities of 2,2,3-trimethylbutane (triptene), a high-quality, knock-resistant aircraft fuel with an octane rating of 112.

In the history of BASF, Wolffhardt was not only the first female graduate to have her own research field, but also the first woman there to celebrate 25 years of service. After this service anniversary in 1950, she continued her research for another ten years—until her retirement in 1960—in the ammonia laboratory at BASF.

Emma Maria Wolffhardt died in Heidelberg on 12 November 1997 at the age of 98.

Literature

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

R. Tobies (ed.): “Despite All Male Culture”: Women in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, Campus Verlag, 1997, p. 58 f.

BASF SE: Die Anilinerinnen, brochure, Ludwigshafen, 2017 (https://www.basf.com/global/de/who-we-are/history.html)

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