Bredig, Georg (1868–1944)

German physical chemist who devised a method of preparing colloidal solutions in 1898. He studied the catalytic action of colloidal platinum and the ‘poisoning’ of catalysts by impurities.

Bredig was born in Glogau, Lower Silesia (now Glogow, Poland). He went to work as an assistant in the laboratory of German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig, and later held academic appointments in physical chemistry in Germany and Switzerland; from 1911 at the Karlsruhe Hochschule, Germany.

Bredig devised his method of preparing colloidal solutions (lyophobic sols) using an electric arc. The colloidal particles are thought to be produced mainly by rapid condensation of the vapour of the arc, and they may be in the form of the metal or its oxide.