Biography
Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov - a peace scientist, whose works still study and uses the global scientific community in their works. He lived a decent life in which there was enough space for anxiety and victories. In his eyes, the country was changing - from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union.
Nikolai Nikolaevich survived the civil war, revolution, repression of the 30s, the second world war. And no matter how hard it was, he remained faithful to science. Semenov still remains the only Russian scientist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Childhood and youth
Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov was born on April 15, 1896 in the family of a professional military. Father - Nikolay Alexandrovich, mother - Elena Alexandrovna. Future scientist until 1909 held childhood in Saratov, then the family moved to Samara.
Here he visited the real school that he graduated with honors in 1913. It was within the walls of this educational institution Nikolai began to be interested in chemistry and physics. Passion for science supported teacher in physics Vladimir Ivanovich Karmilov, with which the future scientist will associate a long and warm friendship.
The young man was constantly engaged in experiments, studying chemical reactions, which, to the horror of adults, ended with the explosions. But at this age, Semenov had an interest in explosive reactions, which became the basis of his scientific research.
After the school, Nikolai enters the University of Petrograd on the Mathematical Department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty. His father is dissatisfied with the choice of his son, as he dreamed of seeing him in military service. Between the parent and son there is a quarrel that lasts for several years.
On the 2nd course, Nikolai is engaged in science under the leadership of Abraha Fedorovich Ioffe. It performs operations on the ionization of atoms and molecules under the action of electron strike in gas burners. After graduating from the university in 1917 he decides to remain in Alma Mater to prepare for the professorship.
In the spring of 1918, events occur, which change the calm rate of the life of a young scientist. Arriving on the summer holidays to parents in Samara, he cares of civil war. According to Nikolai Nikolayevich, he was poorly understood what was happening in the country, and joined voluntarily to the People's Army of the Samara Constituent Assembly, which was under the direction of the ESEROVO government.
About returning to Petrograd I had to forget. Semenov became an ordinary artillery battery. It was located in the position of horse breeding about a month at the front against the Red Army. But I quickly realized that the army service is not its purpose.
Nikolay took over on vacation to a seriously ill father in Samara. From there I was transferred to the Ufa battery, but I did not go to the direction, but in Tomsk, which was counted by desertion from the White Army. Semenov hoped in Tomsk to continue to engage in science. In the Tomsk Institute of Technology, he was provided with a laboratory for research and the opportunity to teach physics at the Department.
Nikolai managed to make several independent scientific works and organized a permanent scientific seminar at the institute, worked with talented students.
In 1919, Semenov mobilized Kolchak into the army. Head of the Department of Physics of the Tomsk Institute of Technology, Boris Petrovich Vainberg, agreed on the transfer of Nicholas to the radio station from which he was sent to the Institute of Technology.
After entering the Tomsk of the Red Army, the radiobatalon entered its composition. The university prepared a petition in the name of the commander of the city, on the basis of which Semenov was expelled from the army.
Later, the White Guard episode in the biography of Nikolai Nikolayevich almost led him under repression in 1937, when arrested lists of scientists were preparing in Leningrad to the fascist terrorist organization. Among the unrealized physico-chemical of Semenov, but he and several more "conspirators" managed to survive. NKVD for an incomprehensible reason left them alone.
The science
In 1920, Nikolai, at the invitation of Abraha Fedorovich Ioffe, returns to Petrograd and arranged to the position of head of the electronic phenomena of the physico-technical department of the X-ray and radiological institution. From 1921 he was renamed to the Leningrad Physics and Technology Institute.
In the same year, a curious case occurs, which could be called a mystical, predetermining the future of the scientist. Together with his classmate, Peter Kapitsa, they ordered their portrait of the famous artist Boris Kustodiev.
"Why don't you draw us, future celebrities?" Asked the artist Kapitsa. What he asked if young scientists were gathering in the future of Nobel laureates. After the affirmative response, the artist postponed the unfinished portrait of Shalyapin and began working on their order.
With Peter Kapitsa Nikolai Semenov, the long years of friendship and joint scientific work were associated. In 1922, they developed a method for measuring the magnetic moment of an atom in an inhomogeneous magnetic field, which successfully developed scientists Otto Stern and Walter Gerlah.
In 1927, Nikolai Nikolayevich appointed to the position of head of the chemical and technical sector of the Leningrad Fiztech, and from the 1928 he becomes his professor. In 1931, it is converted to the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which a scientist manages for 55 years.
In the period of World War II, Semenov, together with other Soviet scientists, is located in the rear, in Kazan, where he continues to work on the issues of burning and explosion. His works received world recognition. It owns the theory of thermal explosion and burning gas mixtures. Nikolai Nikolaevich creates the doctrine of the spread of flame, detonation, burning of explosives.
In 1943, his institute of chemical physics is transferred to Moscow, where active work on the atomic project begins. After the war, Semenov begin to attack by other scientists, which organized one of the odious figures of that time, Professor of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University Nikolai Sergeevich Akulov.
It was a purely ideological campaign from a major scientist. He accused Semenov in low-planness in front of the West and in the plagiarism of ideas.
Herbal and friendship with the fact that the obstacle Petro Kapitsa became a lot of unpleasant moments in the work of the scientist. Semenov was denied tolerance to the Semipalatinsky landfill, where the first atomic bombs were testing. Dozens of scientist employees were involved here, but they were banned by something to tell the manager about the results of the tests.
After the death of Stalin, the campaign against Semenov was over, and the authorities were funded after the award Nikolai Nikolayevich Nobel Prize after the award. The event occurred in 1956. A prize for "research in the field of chemical reaction mechanism", the scientist divided together with the British counterpart by Syril Norman Hinselwood.
Nikolai Nikolayevich was elected to the post of academician-secretary of the Department of Chemical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences, then received the title of Vice President of the Academy of Sciences.
In 1973, he was one of the academics that signed a letter in the Pravda newspaper with the condemnation of the behavior of Academician Sakharov.
Nikolai Nikolayevich led active scientific and organizational and social activities. He was elected to 14 academies of sciences in different countries of the world. For the contribution to Soviet science, he became twice the laureate of the Stalinist Prize, later the Lenin Prize was added to the award.
In the state register of discoveries of the USSR, the work of Academician Semenova on the topic: "The phenomenon of the energy branching chains in chemical reactions". After himself, the scientist left heritage in the form of scientific books and articles.
Personal life
The scientist was married three times. Maria Isidovna Boreysha-Liverovskaya became the first spouse, which was older than Nikolai Nikolayevich for 17 years. Because of his beloved man, she left the former family. She had four children. But, unfortunately, a woman died from cancer in 2 years.
After the death of his wife, a year later, Semenov marries the niece of Maria Isidorovna - Natalia Burtseva. The event occurred in 1924. Two children were born in the couple: Yuri and Lyudmila. The wife helped her husband in his passage trips, translated from three languages. The scientist himself did not speak any one, but could read the literature.
The personal life of the scientist has become the subject of discussion at the Academy of Sciences and the Department of Science of the Central Committee of the CPSU, when in 1971 he addressed the permission to divorce with his wife and marriage on Lydia Grigorievna Shcherbakova, which was much younger than academician. After agreeing, the couple signed up and lived together for many 15 years. There was no children in this marriage.
Death
The scientist died in Moscow on September 25, 1986 at the age of 90. The cause of death is age-related changes.
Nikolai Nikolaevich is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. There is no photo on his grave, but the figure of the scientist is complete. The work performed the famous Soviet sculptor Vladimir Fedorov.
Awards
• 1941 - Stalin's Prize• 1943 - Honorary Member of English Chemical Society
• 1946 - Order of the Red Banner
• 1949 - Stalin's Prize
• 1956 - Nobel Chemistry Prize
• 1958 - Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London
• 1960 - Honorary Doctor of Oxford University
• 1962 - Honorary Member of the New York Academy of Sciences
• 1963 - Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences
• 1965 - Honorary Doctor of the University of London
• 1966 - Hero of Socialist Labor
• 1969 - Big Gold Medal named after M. V. Lomonosov
• 1976 - Lenin Prize
• 1976 - Hero of Socialist Labor
• 1986 - Order of the October Revolution
Bibliography
Books
• 1934 - "Chain reactions"
• 1958 - "On some problems of chemical kinetics and reactivity"
• 1973 - "Science and Society: Articles and Speech"
Articles
• 1923 - "Ionization potentials and gases and vapor glow potentials"
• 1924 - "Chemistry and electronic phenomena"
• 1925 - "On the molecular beam"
• 1930 - "Chain reactions"
• 1930 - "The simplest chemical reactions"
• 1931 - "Gas explosions and chain reaction theory"
• 1940 - "Thermal theory of burning and explosions"
• 1940 - "Thermal theory of burning and explosions" (end)
• 1953 - "The main questions of the modern theory of homogeneous burning of homogeneous gas mixtures"
• 1967 - "Self-ignition and chain reactions"
• 1986 - "Path to science"