Philip Kraft

Biography

Philip Kraft studied Chemistry at Kiel University, where he completed his doctoral thesis in the group of Werner Tochtermann on macrocyclic musks in collaboration with Haarmann & Reimer, Holzminden. In 1996, he joined the Fragrance Research center of Givaudan in Dübendorf, and was promoted to group leader for the discovery of new odorants in 2001. While he is interested in all aspects of fragrant chemistry and perfumery, and also took part in an expedition to the primary rain forests of Madagascar with Roman Kaiser in search of new natural odorants, his main research domain is the rational design and synthesis of new odorants, molecular modeling, and structure–odor relationships. He invented Super Muguet, Azurone, Pomarose — used for instance in ‘1 Million’ (Paco Rabanne, 2008) and ‘Legend’ (Montblanc, 2011), Serenolide — employed for example in ‘Artisan’ (John Varvatos, 2009) and ‘(untitled)’ (Maison Martin Margiela, 2010), Cassyrane, and Sylkolide — first used in ‘Oh Lola!’ (Marc Jacobs, 2011) and ‘L'Air’ (Nina Ricci, 2011). To keep the fascinating subject of Fragrance Chemistry visible to a wider scientific community, he co-organizes the ‘flavours & fragrances’ conferences of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, previously of the Royal Society of Chemistry together with the Society of the Chemical Industry. Since 2008, he lectured on Fragrance Chemistry at the Universities of Bern and Zurich, at the ETH Zurich and since 2021 at the University of Göttingen. Impressed by their leading role in sustainability and back integration, he joined Symrise, Holzminden, in 2021 as principal chemist. He has authored 100 publications, filed 42 patent applications, and invented or co-invented 8 commercial perfumery materials, edited two books, and published, together with Wilhelm Pickenhagen, Fanny Grau and Günther Ohloff, ‘Scent and Chemistry – The Molecular World of Odors' (VHCA, Wiley–VCH, 2nd ed. 2022, ISBN 978-3-527-34855-8).