# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/friedrich-wohler
# Generated: 2026-09-02T06:07:06.483Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/friedrich-wohler"
name: "Friedrich Wöhler"
slug: "friedrich-wohler"
description: "He turned piss into crystals in a lab dish—and by doing it, cracked open the wall between living chemistry and dead matter. The vitalists said only life could build organic molecules. Wöhler made urea from scratch in 1828 and the doctrine began to leak."
tagline: "German chemist (1800-1882)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Friedrich_W%C3%B6hler_Litho.jpg"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "Germany"
  isoCode: "DE"
category:
  name: "Scientists"
  slug: "scientists"
profileType:
  name: "Scientist"
  slug: "scientist"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1800-07-31"
deathDate: "1882-09-23"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           60.3
  momentum:             15
  historical:           22.21474
  currentAttention:     21.42857142857143
  sourceConfidence:     60
  profileCompleteness:  70
  trendDirection:       "STABLE"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: null
tags:
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    slug: "scientists"
  - name: "Scientist"
    slug: "scientist"
  - name: "Chemistry"
    slug: "chemistry"
  - name: "19th Century"
    slug: "19th-century"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Born 31 July 1800 in Germany, Wöhler trained as a chemist and spent the 1820s pulling pure metals out of ores no one had cracked—beryllium, yttrium—and synthesizing odd inorganic compounds like silane and silicon nitride. Then in 1828 he heated ammonium cyanate and got urea, the stuff mammals piss out, without a kidney in sight. It was the first time anyone had built an organic compound from plainly inorganic starting materials, a result that chipped at vitalism, the reigning idea that a mysterious "life force" was required to make the molecules of life. How much credit Wöhler deserves for killing that doctrine remains debated, but the urea synthesis became a landmark. He kept working in both organic and inorganic chemistry until his death on 23 September 1882.