Otto Redlich was an Austrian physical chemist and chemical engineer who is best known for his development of equations of state like Redlich-Kwong equation. Besides this he had numerous other contributions to science.

Biography

Redlich was born 1896 in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. He went to school in the Döbling district of Vienna. After finishing school in 1915 he joined the Austrian Hungarian Army and served as artillery officer mainly at the Italian front in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. He was wounded and became a prisoner of war in August 1918. H returned to Vienna after the war in 1919. He studied chemistry and received his Ph.D. in 1922 for work on the equilibrium of nitric acid, nitrous and nitric oxide. Redlich worked for one year in industry and than joined Emil Abel at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

. He became lecturer in 1929 and professor in 1937. During this time he developed the Teller-Redlich isotopic product rule. After the Anschluss

Anschluss

The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

 in March 1938, Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 and with the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...

 all government employed Jews lost their jobs, including academics. Like many other scientist Redlich tried to leave the Nazi governed Austria.

With the help of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars

Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars

The Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, , assisted scholars who were barred from teaching, persecuted and threatened with imprisonment by the Nazis. The Institute of International Education appointed Edward R. Murrow to lead the effort...

 he was able to emigrate to the United States in December 1938. He gave lectures at several universities and met Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert Newton Lewis was an American physical chemist known for the discovery of the covalent bond , his purification of heavy water, his reformulation of chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to ordinary chemists, his theory of Lewis acids and...

 and Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling

Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century...

. Harold Urey

Harold Urey

Harold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934...

 helped him to get a position in Washington State College. In 1945 he left the College and started to work in industry, at Shell Development Co. in Emeryville, California

Emeryville, California

Emeryville is a small city located in Alameda County, California, in the United States. It is located in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, extending to the shore of San Francisco Bay. Its proximity to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and...

. He published his paper on the improvement of the ideal gas equation

Ideal gas law

The ideal gas law is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gas. It is a good approximation to the behavior of many gases under many conditions, although it has several limitations. It was first stated by Émile Clapeyron in 1834 as a combination of Boyle's law and Charles's law...

 in 1949, today known as the Redlich–Kwong equation of state

Redlich–Kwong equation of state

In physics and thermodynamics, the Redlich–Kwong equation of state is an equation that is derived from the van der Waals equation. It is generally more accurate than the van der Waals equation and the ideal gas equation, but not used as frequently because the increased difficulty in its derivatives...

.

In 1962 Redlich retired from Shell and received a position at University of California at Berkeley. He died in California in 1978.