Nikolai Zelinsky, a well-known Russian scientist in the field of organic chemistry, who created an entire scientific school, was born in Tiraspol on February 6, 1861.
Many people know that Zelinsky, who was at the forefront of petrochemicals, the founder of organic catalysis, became the "father" of the first gas mask based on a carbon filter, which appeared very on time - in the midst of the First World War. But not everyone knows that he intentionally did not patent a product that saved millions of lives. He considered it unworthy to profit from what can save a person from death.
Childhood
At the age of 10, little Kolya entered the Tiraspol district school, where he prematurely completed preparatory courses for the gymnasium, designed for two years. At the age of eleven, a smart, talented boy entered the second grade of the Odessa Classical Richelieu School. After graduating from it in 1880, Nikolai Zelinsky, in the same place, in Odessa, became a student at the Novorossiysk University at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, while the emphasis in training was placed on the natural sciences.
After graduating from university in 1884, he decided to go deep into study, and after 4 years he passed the master's exam with brilliance, a year later, he graduated from it, and in 1891 he also defended his doctoral dissertation.
From 1893 to 1953, a biography of Nikolai Zelinsky was written within the walls of Moscow University, where he worked with an interval of six years - from 1911 to 1917, during which he was absent from the university. It was then that in protest he left the university with a group of scientists who disagreed with the policies of the reactionary Casso, the Minister of Education of Tsarist Russia.
In St. Petersburg, Zelinsky headed the Central Laboratory of the Ministry of Finance and headed the department of the Polytechnic Institute.
In 1935, the biography of Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky was marked by an important event. He took an active part in organizing the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In this educational institution, he later led several laboratories. Since 1953, this institute bears the name of Nikolai Zelinsky.
Proceedings
Peru scientist owns about 40 works, the main of which are devoted to the catalysis of organic substances and the chemistry of hydrocarbons. He also has works on the chemistry of amino acids and electrical conductivity.
Scientific activity
All his life a man has devoted to chemistry. In the summer of 1891, Nikolai Zelinsky took part in a scientific expedition whose purpose was to examine the waters of the Black Sea. As a result, he proved that hydrogen sulfide in water has a bacterial origin.
According to Zelinsky, oil also has an organic origin. In the course of research, the scientist tried to prove this. From 1895 to 1907, Nikolai Zelinsky became the first to synthesize a number of reference hydrocarbons to study oil fractions. Already in 1911 he conducted experiments that formed the basis of the industrial method for the production of aromatic hydrocarbons from oil, which are used in the production of plastics and medicines, toxic chemicals and dyes.
He developed a new method for producing gasoline - by cracking hydrochloric oil and oil with the participation of aluminum chloride and bromide, this method has gained industrial scale and played an important role in providing our country with gasoline. When creating benzene, Zelinsky first proposed using activated carbon as a catalyst.
But this great man was not really famous for this, because he is not just called the savior of human lives. The key to Nikolai Zelinsky’s biography was the creation of a gas mask in 1915 on the basis of a coal filter, which was adopted by the armies of the Russians and our allies from 1914 to 1918 during the First World War.
Teacher
Nikolai Dmitrievich is the creator of a large school of scientists whose works have significantly influenced the development of the chemical field of our country. Academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences L. F. Vereshchagin and A. A. Balandin, K. A. Kocheshkov and B. A. Kazansky, as well as Nesmeyanov and Nametkin made an invaluable contribution to Russian science. Corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Union KP Lavrovsky, N. A. Izgaryshev, B. M. Mikhailov and many other professors also distinguished themselves.
The All-Union Chemical Society named after Mendeleev was created with the active participation of Nikolai Zelinsky, who since 1941 acquired the status of an honorary member of this organization.
Since 1921, Nikolai Dmitrievich was a member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, and in 1935 he was assigned to head it.
Heritage
Zelinsky's house in Tiraspol, where he spent his childhood, today is a museum of the great scientist. School number 6, where the future great chemist studied, today is a humanitarian and mathematical gymnasium, on the facade of which a memorial plaque flaunts. A monument to the great Russian scientist stands in front of the building of an educational institution.
A street in Tiraspol is named after Zelinsky. Nikolai Dmitrievich left a truly huge legacy, and in fact he was a very modest person in life, as everyone who knew him said, including his son. In Chisinau, a street in the area of Botanica is named after the academician. Nikolay Zelinsky Street in Tyumen with an index of 625016 and 20 houses in 2017, according to the plans of the city authorities, was repaired.
Personal
Nikolai Zelinsky was married three times. With his first wife Raisa, who died in 1906, he lived for 25 years. The second wife of the scientist Yevgeny Kuzmina-Karavaev was a pianist, their marriage also lasted 25 years. The third wife - Nina Evgenievna Zhukovskaya-God was an artist, and Nikolai Zelinsky also lived with her for a long time - 20 years.
Nikolai Dmitrievich has three children: sons Andrei and Nikolai and daughter Raisa Zelinskaya-Plata, who lived from 1910 to 2001.
Awards
In 1924, a Russian scientist was awarded the A. M. Butlerov Prize.
The Lenin Prize was issued by the National Economy Committee in 1934. Chemist Nikolai Zelinsky became the winner of the Stalin Prize in 1942, as well as in 1946 and in 1948. The title of Hero of Socialist Labor was assigned to him in 1945.
Nikolai Dmitrievich was awarded 4 orders of V.I. Lenin, was the owner of 2 orders of the Red Banner of Labor and medals in honor of the 800th anniversary of the capital and "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War."
War
Some facts of a brief biography of Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky cause a sense of pride for his compatriot. During World War I, the Germans launched a global chemical war, threatening to take on a planetary scale.
The first case of the use of chemical weapons was recorded on April 22, 1915. Early in the morning at the Belgian Ypres, chlorine was used against the Anglo-French troops preparing for the offensive. Despite the fact that this is not a chemical warfare agent, the losses of the first French army turned out to be significant. After all, there is no escape from the caustic gas that provokes a terrible suffocating cough of gas; it is able to penetrate into any gap. About five thousand soldiers and officers died right on the ground, twice as many forever became crippled and disabled with a loss of combat capability.
A month later, and Russian troops were exposed to a gas attack. This happened near Warsaw in the area of Bolimov. The Germans sprinkled 264 tons of chlorine on a 12-kilometer front-line section. There were more than a thousand people dead, there is information about the victims that their number is close to 9 thousand.
In the 19th century, the first protective masks were invented, which were a material impregnated with a special composition. Both French and English gas masks during the war showed their inefficiency, but they protected against mosquitoes not bad.
It was necessary to look for a remedy against gas. Otherwise, the war was destined to end in favor of the German side.
An interesting fact is that during the First World War, thanks to the research of Nikolai Zelinsky, the Russian army managed to increase the yield of toluene, which was used to make explosives. Toluene is obtained during the processing of petroleum products.
Poison Absorption
But back to the beginning of the chemical war … Zelinsky understood that chlorine is the most harmless gas that the German enemy can use, and the worst is to come. He looked into the water - dichlorodiethyl sulfide, the so-called "mustard gas" or "mustard gas" was soon used in battle. Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky could not remain uninvolved, he sincerely wanted to help his homeland, to pay his debt as a true patriot. Moreover, the scientist himself became the first victim of this gas thirty years before this event.
How did he know this substance? In 1885, while on a business trip, he worked in the laboratory of the University of Göttingen and invented a new substance - the very dichlorodiethyl sulfide that caused him severe burns, after which he spent a long time in the hospital.
Zelinsky considered it a mistake to create a chemical absorber for a certain substance - for another it may not work, so in order not to waste time inventing useless, it is necessary to find a substance that would purify all the air, no matter what the composition of what was sprayed and what needs to be destroyed.
Life coal
Zelinsky discovered such a substance, it turned out to be charcoal, it remains only to understand how to increase its ability to absorb substances, in other words, how to maximize its activation.
He conducted many tests on himself. In the summer of 1915, poisons — chlorine and phosgene — were introduced in the St. Petersburg laboratory of the Ministry of Finance. Zelinsky wrapped 50 grams of shredded activated birch charcoal in a handkerchief and was able to spend several minutes with his eyes closed in the poisoned room, pressing the handkerchief to his mouth and nose, and thus breathing.
