Georg Ludwig Ulex

Georg Ludwig Ulex
Georg Ludwig Ulex c. 1875
Born	8 October 1811 Neuhaus an der Oste, Lower Saxony, Germany
Died	25 March 1883 Altona, Hamburg, Germany
Occupation(s)	Chemist and politician

Georg Ludwig Ulex (8 October 1811 – 25 March 1883) was a German chemist and politician.

Ulex was born in Neuhaus an der Oste, in Lower Saxony, Germany to Georg Friedrich Ulrich (1841–1907), a pharmacist in Hamburg. He apprenticed as a pharmacist himself in Hamburg, then studied in Berlin. Upon returning to Hamburg, he ran a pharmacy from 1839. From 1840 he taught chemistry and physics at the Hamburg pharmaceutical school, and in 1873 became a Handelschemiker (a commercial/forensic chemist), a post he held until his death.^[1][2]

Ulex provided an early description of the phosphate mineral struvite in 1845, naming it in honour of geographer and geologist Heinrich Christian Gottfried von Struve (1772–1851) of Hamburg.^[3]

The mineral ulexite was discovered in 1839 and named after him in 1840, in recognition of his publication of the first chemical analysis of the mineral.^[4][5]

During the revolutions of 1848, Ulex was elected to the constituent assembly of Hamburg and assisted in drafting its new consitutution, adopted in 1860. He was a member of the Hamburg Constituent Assembly from 1859 to 1860, and a member of the Hamburg Parliament from 1862 to 1874.^[2]

Ulex was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the University of Rostock in 1871. He spent his final years in Altona, where he died in 1883.^[1]