Adolph Frank


Adolph Frank was a German chemist, engineer, and businessman. He is best known for having discovered uses of potash and creating the industry.
Adolph Frank was born in the town of Klötze. In 1861 and 1862, he received his doctorate in chemistry from the university in Göttingen with a work about the production of sugar. Before this, in 1858, he had already received his first patent while working for a sugar beet factory in Staßfurt. He received this patent for having discovered a way to clean beet juice with clay soaps. The emphasis of his work was on the use of potash as an artificial fertilizer.
After 1860, he discovered and developed a deposit near Staßfurt and Leopoldshall, thus founding the industry. In 1861, he gained the patent on fertilizer on the basis of potassium chloride. A further invention of his was a method for the extraction of bromine from salt mines.
His work in the field of fertilizers led to the use of the fertilizer discovered by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. Together with the German-Polish chemist Nikodem Caro, he developed the Frank-Caro process of extracting calcium cyanamide in 1899, which was the foundation of the nitrogen and calcium cyanamide fertilizer industry. In the same year those two and a few other businessmen founded Cyanidgesellschaft mbH, which would later become Bayrischen Stickstoff-Werke AG in Trostberg.
The brown coloring of bottles, which is supposed to protect the content of the bottle from the effects of light, can also be attributed to him. He also researched the extraction of hydrogen for blimp together with Carl von Linde.
He was awarded the John Scott Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1893.