Carl Magnus von Hell was the German chemist who discovered, together with Jacob Volhard

Jacob Volhard

Jacob Volhard was the German chemist who discovered, together with his student Hugo Erdmann, the Volhard-Erdmann cyclization reaction. He was also responsible for the improvement of the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation....

 and the Russian chemist Nikolay Zelinsky, the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky halogenation reaction.

Life

He studied chemistry at the Technical University of Stuttgart with
Hermann von Fehling

Hermann von Fehling

Hermann von Fehling was a German chemist, famous as the developer of Fehling's solution used for estimation of sugar.-Biography:...

 and at the University of Munich with Emil Erlenmeyer. After serving in the Franco-Prussian war

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

 in 1870 he became assistant, and after of Fehling in 1883, professor for chemistry at the Technical University of Stuttgart. He supervised the building of the new laboratory which was finished in 1895/96. His research interests have been dicarboxylic acid

Dicarboxylic acid

Dicarboxylic acids are organic compounds that contain two carboxylic acid functional groups. In molecular formulae for dicarboxylic acids, these groups are often written as HOOC-R-COOH, where R may be an alkyl, alkenyl, alkynyl, or aryl group...

s aliphatic hydrocarbons and their synthesis. He synthesized the C₆₀H₁₂₂ showing that carbon chains of up to 60 atoms are possible.
Due to an eye illness he asked for retirement in 1914.