Moses Wolf Goldberg

Moses Wolf Goldberg was born in Rūjiena, Latvia in 1905 and moved to Võru, Estonia as a young child. Goldberg attended the German Oberrealschule in Tartu and studied science and mathematics at the University of Tartu from 1923 to 1924.^[2] He then enrolled at ETH Zurich, where he earned a Diploma in Chemical Engineering. He did his doctoral work under Nobel Prize winner Leopold Ružička and was a colleague of other notable chemists, including Tadeus Reichstein,^[3] Leo Henryk Sternbach, and George Rosenkranz. In 1931, he submitted a doctoral thesis entitled Versuche zur Synthese Ephedrin-ähnlicher Körper (Assay for Synthesis of an Ephedrine-Like Body)^[2] and earned the Habilitation degree in 1935 despite increasing xenophobia at the institution.^[4] In 1940, Goldberg was awarded the Werner Medal and Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society.^[1]

Due to the increasingly unwelcoming climate for Jews in Europe, in 1942 Goldberg emigrated to the United States along with many other Jewish scientists fleeing the Nazis.^[5] He took a position with Hoffmann-La Roche at the company's Nutley, New Jersey facility. With Leo Sternbach, Goldberg patented a process for synthesizing biotin in 1949.^[6] He obtained numerous other patents while working for Hoffmann-La Roche, identifying and refining antibiotics and other drugs.

Goldberg died at the age of 58 in February, 1964.^[7]

Moses Wolf Goldberg was the son of Meyer Itzik Goldberg and Kayla Hanna Gibberman. His parents were born in Bauska, Latvia, and they married in Riga in 1904. He had a younger brother, Leo (b. 1907),^[8] who also studied at the University of Tartu,^[9] and a sister Miriam (b. 1909).^[10] His father Meyer Itzik Goldberg was deported to Siberia, and died or was killed in the SevUralLag camp in December 1941.^[11] His mother Kayla Hanna Goldberg and sister-in-law Erna Furman Goldberg (Leo's wife) were deported to Nedostupny,^[12] in the Tomsk region of Siberia, and probably perished there. His sister Miriam and her husband Leo Klionski fled with other Jewish refugees to Tashkent, Uzbekistan;^[13][14] Leo Klionski survived the war and returned to Estonia, but it is unclear what happened to Miriam. Leo Goldberg was not deported in 1941, and his fate is unknown.^[12]

Moses Wolf Goldberg married Regina Hauser in Switzerland around 1928, and they emigrated together in January 1942 along with Regina's mother Ida Hauser.^[15] They had no children.