Ferdinand Münz


Ferdinand Münz was an Austrian chemist who first synthetized EDTA at the IG Farben in 1935, patented both in Germany and in the USA , with the aim of producing a citric acid substitute, in order to reduce the German government's dependence on imports of chemical products from abroad. Münz noted that an aminocarboxylic acid worked much better as a chelating agent than citric acid and therefore thought that a polyaminopolycarboxylic acid would have worked even better.
In 1945 he worked closely with the future Nobel laureate Kurt Alder. In 1949 they published a paper together on diene synthesis and additions.