Friedrich Wohler [1800-1882]

German physician and chemist, who became a professor of chemistry at Gottingen.

In 1828 he made his best-known discovery, the synthesis of urea (an organic compound) from ammonium cyanate (an inorganic salt): see Wohler's synthesis. This finally disproved the assertion that organic substances can be formed only in living things. Wohler also isolated aluminium (1827), beryllium (1828), and yttrium (1828).