Osman Achmatowicz
Osman Achmatowicz (April 16, 1899 – December 4, 1988) was a Polish chemist of Lipka Tatar descent, who studied alkaloid natural products.
The sixth of eight children in the noble family of jurist Alexander Achmatowicz, he was born at the ancestral estate Bergaliszki, near Oszmania, on 16 March 1899.
For the next three years, he worked under the research supervision of Professor Casimir Slawinski, and graduated in 1928 with a doctorate on the terpenoid bicyclic hydrocarbon bornylene.
Following graduation, the National Culture Fund of Poland sponsored him for two years as a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University's Dyson Perrins Laboratory.
Returning to Vilno, Achmatowicz rejoined the university's organic chemistry department, both teaching and continuing to research the strychnos alkaloids.
The following year (1934), Achmatowicz joined the faculty of pharmacy at the University of Warsaw as professor extraordinaire to the chair of pharmaceutical and toxicological chemistry.
He, with B. Bochwic, verified that catalytic deamination extended to brucine-type compounds as well, and, with K. Lindenfeld, determined the influence of the ethylenic linkage's position on the reaction's ease.
His colleagues recommended examining club mosses (Lycopodium clavatum, selago and annotinum) and water lilies (Nuphar lutea and Nymphaea alba), and these proved fruitful.
After two years, Achmatowicz, in conjunction with the Polish pharmaceutical industry and Spiess and Son, succeeded in isolating and characterising several novel alkaloids.
General Stanisław Kopański, chief of staff of the Polish Armed Forces, stationed in Great Britain at that time, rendered additional financial aid.
Starting in the 1950s, when his Łódź laboratory was sponsored by the National Culture Fund and the Polish Academy of Sciences, Achmatowicz also resumed his research on Lycopodium and Nuphar alkaloids.
These techniques rapidly produced significant and ground-breaking results: Particularly important and fruitful were the studies on Nuphar luteum alkaloids.
