Karl Ludwig Reimer (1845-1883)

German chemist and industrialist, born in Leipzig. He studied at Göttingen, Greifswald, Heidelberg and Berlin, with interruptions caused by the war of 1866 and an attack of typhoid fever, and obtained his doctorate in Berlin in 1871 under August Wilhelm von Hofmann.

He then worked in the chemical industry. At the end of 1875 he discovered that phenoxides react with chloroform to give aromatic aldehydes; the reaction was published in 1876 together with Ferdinand Tiemann. That same year he became a partner in the vanillin factory in Holzminden, which was renamed Haarmann & Reimer (now part of Symrise).

He left the company in 1881 because of illness and died in Berlin two years later, aged only 37.