Abstract
LEON MAQUENNE, whose death is announced, was born in 1853, and will be remembered as one of those able experimenters and clear-sighted research workers who made notable discoveries in the domain of organic chemistry when the science was still in its infancy and before any really definite views as to the structure of carbon compounds, especially those of natural origin, had been developed. His most noteworthy contributions deal with the structure of the sugar alcohols, important naturally occurring substances which, for many years, resisted the attack of the chemists of his time, and his first achievement in this field was the determination of the constitution of inositol, a compound which occurs widely in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He was able to show that this sugar alcohol was hexahydroxycyclohexane, and thus not only established the structure of the first member of an important new series, but also indicated the close relationship which exists between substances produced in the organism and benzene.
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Léon Maquenne. Nature 115, 503 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115503a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115503a0