(1869–1930), Austrian chemist and Nobel laureate, noted for his important improvement of the microanalysis of organic compounds.

Born in Laibach, Austria (now Ljubljana, Slovenia), Pregl was educated in medicine at the University of Graz. An assistant lecturer for physiology and histology at the university even before his graduation in 1894, he became chair of that department in 1903, and then went to Germany for additional training in Tübingen, Leipzig, and Berlin in 1904. Pregl taught at the University of Innsbruck (1910–13) and at the University of Graz from 1913 until his retirement in 1930. Also in 1913 he became director of Graz’s Medico-Chemical Institute, where he had worked from 1905 to 1910.

In 1904 Pregl began his investigations of the chemical components making up ALBUMIN, and BILE, (qq.v.). His studies involved the analysis of organic molecules that consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with traces of nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and other elements. His analytical methods were less complicated and more exact than previous methods, using equipment designed to handle small amounts of material and taking much less time to reach results as accurate as those obtained by macroanalysis. Microanalysis, as this type of chemical analysis became known, gave impetus to the study of enzymes, vitamins, and hormones. Pregl’s authoritative monograph, Die quantitative Microanalyse (1917), was republished in several enlarged and revised editions and translated into many languages.

Pregl was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in chemistry for “his invention of the methods of microanalysis of organic substances.”

See also CHEMICAL ANALYSIS,; CHEMISTRY, ORGANIC,.