Leo Sternbach
| Leo Henryk Sternbach | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 7, 1908 Opatija, Austria-Hungary (now Croatia) |
| Died | September 28, 2005 (aged 97) Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States |
| Nationality | American Jew |
| Occupation | Chemist |
| Known for | Discovering benzodiazepines |
| Relatives | Michael Abracham Sternbach (father) Piroska (née Cohn) Sternbach (mother) |
Leo Henryk Sternbach (May 7, 1908 – September 28, 2005) was a Croatian-born Jewish American chemist who is credited with discovering benzodiazepines, the main class of tranquilizers.
Sternbach was born on May 7, 1908, in Opatija, to a Jewish family. He had a younger brother, Giusi. His father Michael Abracham Sternbach was from Polish city of Przemyśl in Galicia (then part of Austria-Hungary), and his mother Piroska (née Cohn) Sternbach was from Orosháza, Hungary. Sternbach's parents met and married in Opatija where they both lived. The family lived in a rented four-room apartment on the third floor of the "Vila Jadran" (Villa Adriatic), near the pharmacy owned by Sternbach's father. His family was an upper middle class Opatija family. In 1926, Sternbach moved with his family to Poland.
He received his master's degree in pharmacy in 1929 and his doctoral degree in organic chemistry in 1931 from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He left Poland because of increasing anti-Semitism. In Vienna he worked with Wolfgang Joseph Pauli (Sr.) and Sigmund Fränkel; after which he worked with Leopold Ružička at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Moving to Basel, Switzerland, he worked with Hoffmann-La Roche and married Herta Kreuzer. In 1941, he moved to the United States to work with Hoffmann-La Roche in Nutley, New Jersey, thus escaping the Nazis.
...
Wikipedia