Ferdinand Münz

Ferdinand Münz (1888-1969) was an Austrian chemist who first synthesized EDTA at IG Farben in 1935, patented both in Germany (anonymously) and in the USA, with the aim of producing a citric acid substitute, in order to reduce the German government's dependence on imports of chemical products from abroad. Münz noted that an aminocarboxylic acid worked much better as a chelating agent than citric acid and therefore thought that a polyaminopolycarboxylic acid would have worked even better.