Friedrich Reinitzer

Friedrich Richard Reinitzer (25 February 1857 to 16 February 1927) was an Austrian botanist and organic chemist. In the late 1880s, while experimenting with a plant-derived substance known as cholesteryl benzoate, he accidentally discovered some of the properties of liquid crystals, a name given later by Otto Lehmann. Born into a German Bohemian family in Prague, he studied chemistry at the German technical university there and was habilitated as a private docent in 1883. From 1888 to 1901 he was a professor, first at the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität and then at the technical university in Graz, which he served as rector in 1909 and 1910, and he died in Graz. In 1888 he noticed a strange behaviour of what would later be called liquid crystals and collaborated with the physicist Otto Lehmann of Aachen to explain it. The discovery received much attention at the time, but no practical uses were apparent and interest soon dropped. His works include Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Cholesterins (1888) and a 1891 paper on the concept of tannin and its relation to plant chemistry.