Search This Blog

Saturday, March 01, 2008

One Shot

Identify this person.

He was born in 1893 in Russia in a family which had strong Anti-Tsarist tendencies. He got interested in chemistry after he tried to devise a bomb to kill the Czar! He was forced to leave Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1905 and he moved to Zurich, Switzerland where he studied Chemistry. He returned to Russia at the time of World War I but wasn't allowed to join the army. He went on to work in a Military lab where he was awarded the rank of Combrig [Brigade Commander equivalent to a General].
After leaving the army he joined the Laboratory of Biophysics in the USSR Ministry of Health and it was here while looking for an inorganic analog of the citric acid cycle that he came up with his seminal work and practically discovered a new branch of nonlinear dynamic chemical reactions. Unfortunately, his work was rejected by journals on the grounds that "it was impossible". Finally, he published his results in an obscure little non-review journal and thereafter effectively left science. The reactions he discovered are now named after him.

Source: Talk on 'Chemical Clocks' by Narayanan Kurur at IIT Delhi [Tryst, 1st March 2008] and Wikipedia

2 comments:

Prahlad Srihari said...

Boris Pavlovich Belousov & the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (BZ reaction)

Debasish said...

Boris Pavlovich Belousov is correct.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

One Shot

Identify this person.

He was born in 1893 in Russia in a family which had strong Anti-Tsarist tendencies. He got interested in chemistry after he tried to devise a bomb to kill the Czar! He was forced to leave Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1905 and he moved to Zurich, Switzerland where he studied Chemistry. He returned to Russia at the time of World War I but wasn't allowed to join the army. He went on to work in a Military lab where he was awarded the rank of Combrig [Brigade Commander equivalent to a General].
After leaving the army he joined the Laboratory of Biophysics in the USSR Ministry of Health and it was here while looking for an inorganic analog of the citric acid cycle that he came up with his seminal work and practically discovered a new branch of nonlinear dynamic chemical reactions. Unfortunately, his work was rejected by journals on the grounds that "it was impossible". Finally, he published his results in an obscure little non-review journal and thereafter effectively left science. The reactions he discovered are now named after him.

Source: Talk on 'Chemical Clocks' by Narayanan Kurur at IIT Delhi [Tryst, 1st March 2008] and Wikipedia

2 comments:

Prahlad Srihari said...

Boris Pavlovich Belousov & the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (BZ reaction)

Debasish said...

Boris Pavlovich Belousov is correct.