NIKOLAI SEMYONOV, 90; SCIENTIST
WHO WON NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY
Author: Associated Press
Date: Tuesday, September 30, 1986
Page: 22
Section: OBITUARY
MOSCOW -- Nikolai Semyonov, a pioneering Soviet scientist who was awarded
the 1956 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in exploring chain reactions,
has died, the official news agency Tass said Sunday. He was 90.
Tass said Mr. Semyonov died Thursday, but gave no other details.
The news agency hailed Mr. Semyonov for work that benefited the economy,
adding that his research "made a considerable contribution to the
strengthening of the country's defense potential."
Tass said the scientist "developed a general theory of chemical chain
reactions and a theory of the burning and explosion processes," and credited
him with laying the foundations of a new branch of science, chemical physics.
Mr. Semyonov shared the 1956 Nobel prize with Britain's Sir Cyril
Hinshelwood.
The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences noted in its citation that the two
men had done significant work exploring why chain reactions occur "and their
importance in connection with the phenomenon of explosion."
Born in the Volga River town of Saratov in south-central Russia, Mr.
Semyonov was educated in the former czarist capital of St. Petersburg,
graduating from the city's university in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik
Revolution.
He published his first research paper in 1916 and became a lecturer at the
University of Tomsk in western Siberia after graduation.
In 1920, he returned to Leningrad, the name given St. Petersburg after the
revolution, to work at the Physico-Technical Institute, where he became a full
professor in 1928.
In 1929, his research won him corresponding membership in the prestigious
Soviet Academy of Sciences, and he became a full member in 1932.
He headed research at the academy's Institute of Chemical Sciences in
Leningrad in 1931 and became its director eight years later. The institute
moved to Moscow in 1943.
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