author
b. 1883
Best known for a practical early-20th-century book on synthetic tannins, this Austrian chemist wrote from firsthand experience in both industry and the leather trade. His work captures a moment when chemistry was rapidly reshaping manufacturing after World War I.
Born in 1883, Georg Grasser is chiefly remembered today for Synthetic Tannins: Their Synthesis, Industrial Production and Application, published in English in 1922. Library records and modern editions consistently identify him as the author of that work, which helped explain a specialized but important corner of industrial chemistry.
In the book's preface, Grasser describes experience at B.A.S.F. and says that, after the war, he served as a technical consultant to the Austrian Hide and Leather Commission. That background helps explain the book's clear focus: it was written not just for chemists, but for people working directly with tanning materials and leather production.
What makes Grasser interesting as an author is the blend of science and practice in his writing. Rather than treating chemistry as an abstract subject, he presents synthetic tannins as tools that could change everyday industrial work, giving modern readers a snapshot of how applied chemistry was discussed in the early 1920s.