Leverkusen - Friedrich Hofmann was a man of vision. The much decorated scientist found out in his own lifetime just how important his 1909 development – a process for manufacturing synthetic rubber – has been for the world. Looking back at his research work at the age of 85, he said: “I set myself the task of synthesizing something that my own country did not have…”

What his country was lacking was a suitable alternative to natural rubber. By the beginning of the 20th century, as the process of industrialization continued to gather pace, products made from the sap of the rubber tree were beginning to reach their limits. The natural raw material was unable to satisfy the high demand for rubber products and was subject to fluctuations in quality and price. What’s more, natural rubber was not sufficiently heat-resistant and allowed only very limited chemical modification. In 1906, a competition set up by his employer – Elberfelder Farbenfabriken – and an article he happened upon about the possibility of synthesizing rubber motivated the highly educated chemist and pharmacist to search for a synthetic alternative to natural rubber. The management at his company saw a major opportunity for profitable business in the rapidly burgeoning demand for rubber generated by the tire and electronics industries – as long as rubber could be produced artificially.

Hofmann got down to work and, in less than three years, succeeded in developing a methyl rubber. On September 12, 1909, his invention was registered at the Imperial Patents Office under patent number 250 690 – a “process for manufacturing artificial rubber”.

German rubber hits the headlines in the United States

In the same year, samples of Friedrich Hofmann’s synthetic rubber were successfully vulcanized and, for the very first time, processed into test tires. In 1911, industrialist Carl Duisberg drove an impressive 4,000 kilometers on these tires – without a single puncture. He later made sure to point out, in front of a number of chemists, that the artificial tires had been made using alcohol. Even Germany’s Emperor at the time, Wilhelm II, declared that he was “extremely pleased” with the new methyl rubber tires, which he ordered for his own fleet of vehicles in 1912. A headline in the New York Tribune promptly proclaimed: “The German Emperor drives a car with tires made from a substance obtained from liquor.”

Even though Hofmann’s production method was used to manufacture huge volumes of hard rubber during World War I, the process was still extremely time-consuming. As a result, synthetic rubber only really made its industrial breakthrough in the 1920s, when Hofmann’s successors developed a new material made with the help of butadiene and sodium. This material entered large-scale production at the end of the 1930s under the name “BUNA”. Nevertheless, Hofmann and his development still served as the basis for the production of styrene-butadiene rubber, which is used to this day as a raw material for numerous other synthetic rubber variants and modifications.

From pharmacist to rubber expert

Friedrich Hofmann, who preferred to be known as Fritz, was born on November 2, 1866, the sixth child of a businessman’s family in the small town of Kölleda, near Weimar, in Germany. After attending convent school in Donndorf and boarding school at the “Königliche Landesschule” in Pforta, he completed a pharmaceutical apprenticeship at the municipal pharmacy (Ratsapotheke) in Göttingen. He went on to study pharmaceuticals in Berlin, complete the state pharmaceutical exam and become a licensed pharmacist. But that wasn’t enough for him. Hofmann signed up to study chemistry in Rostock, where he completed a doctorate with “magna cum laude” honors in 1895. Hofmann then spent two years teaching as an assistant lecturer at the Technical University of Aachen, before joining Elberfelder Farbenfabriken on August 1, 1897.

During his time at the company, besides working on the production of synthetic rubber, the gifted chemist was also involved in a number of other areas, including the development of pharmaceutical products. For example, employees at the newly founded Institute of Chemotherapy worked under his leadership to develop active pharmaceutical ingredients that could be used to combat diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and cancer. Hofmann himself was a prolific writer of studies on pain relief and was even involved in the development of crop protection agents. Having spent 21 years at the company and as the head of numerous scientific laboratories, he left Elberfelder Farbenfabriken in 1918 at the age of 52 to take up a position as head of the Institute for Coal Research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Breslau. There he would help to advance the cause of scientific progress until his retirement.

However, Friedrich Hofmann’s most significant achievement remained the development of synthetic rubber, which has earned him worldwide recognition. In 1912, the father of two was awarded the gold Emil Fischer Medal by the German Chemical Society for his rubber research. He also received the Goethe Medal for Art and Science in 1941 and, in the same year, the DeLaval Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his rubber synthesis. On his 70th birthday, he was made an honorary citizen of the towns of Breslau and Kölleda. The Honorary Professor of Chemistry and Metallurgy died in Hanover on October 29, 1956, at the age of 89.