Curtius rearrangement
An explosive tale of serendipitous discovery
In 1857, Theodor Curtius was born in the Prussian Rhineland city of Duisburg, then a major site of chemical industry in which the Curtius family held a large stake – Theodor’s grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm had founded a sulfuric acid factory in 1824, and his father Julius had established ultramarine pigment and alum works.
He would go on to discover a host of new nitrogen-containing organic compounds, leading him to stumble upon the transformation of an acyl azide into an isocyanate – the Curtius rearrangement