Nikolay Dmitriyevich Zelinsky (Russian: Николай Дмитриевич Зелинский; Ukrainian: Микола Дмитрович Зелінський, romanized: Mykola Dmytrovich Zelinskyy; 6 February [O.S. 25 January] 1861 – 31 July 1953) was a Russian and Soviet chemist and educator. He was a professor at Moscow University from 1893 and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (1929). Zelinsky studied at the University of Odessa and at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen in Germany. Zelinsky was one of the founders of theory on organic catalysis. He was the inventor of the first effective filtering activated charcoal gas mask in the world (1915).
Life Nikolai Zelinsky was born on 6 February [O.S. 25 January] 1861 in Tiraspol in a noble family. His father Dmitry Osipovich Zelinsky, who came from hereditary Volhynian nobles, died of rapidly developing consumption in 1863; two years later his mother died of the same disease. The orphaned boy was left in the care of his grandmother M.P. Vasilyeva and he spent his childhood in her village. At the age of ten, Nikolai Zelinsky entered the Tiraspol district school for two-year courses to prepare for entering the gymnasium. Having completed them ahead of schedule at the age of 11, he entered the second grade of Odessa Richelieu Gymnasium. After graduating from the gymnasium in 1880, Zelinsky entered the natural science department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Novorossiysk University, and graduated in 1884. He was given an appointment at the university and was sent to Germany. He did research for two years (1885–1887), first he worked in the laboratory of Johannes Wislicenus in Leipzig. Then he performed a study of a new reaction in the laboratory of Viktor Meyer in Göttingen, which led to severe poisoning himself with mustard gas, which had not been studied enough by that time. In 1887 he was appointed Privatdozent in the Department of Chemistry at the Novorossiysk University. In 1888, he passed the master's exam, and in 1889, he defended his master's thesis ("On the issue of Isomer in the thiophene series"), and in 1891, he defended his doctoral thesis ("Investigation of the phenomena of isomerism in the series of saturated carbon compounds"). He was invited to Moscow University on the initiative of Dmitri Mendeleev. He was a professor at Moscow University from 1893 until his death, with the exception of the period 1911–1917. From 1893, he became an extraordinary professor at the Department of Organic Chemistry, and from 1902, he was an ordinary professor. In 1911, he left the university with a group of scientists in protest against the policy of the tsarist Minister of Education Lev Kasso. From 1911 to 1917, he worked as a professor at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute.
In 1917, he returned to Moscow University. There, he was a professor of the Department of Chemistry (1917–1929) of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty, then he became the head of the Department of Organic Chemistry (1929–1930 and 1933–1938), head of the Department of Petroleum Chemistry (1938–1953), and head of the Laboratory of Antibiotics and Biogenic Bases (1950–1953) of the Faculty of Chemistry. Also, he was the head of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Chemical Department (1932–1933). From 1935, he actively participated in the organization of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences, later he headed a number of its laboratories. On 10 July, 1941 Zelinsky joined the Scientific and Technical Council for the development and testing of scientific works related to military defense, chaired by the authorized State Defense Committee, Professor Sergei Kaftanov. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked in evacuation until the summer of 1943. Zelinsky took part in work to improve the quality of aviation gasolines and lubricating oils. A new process has been developed to produce high octane fuel; new catalysts were found for the processes of aromatization of oil and the production of defense products. Under the leadership of Zelinsky, the process of catalytic cracking of oil was studied in detail with the determination of the chemical nature of its products by spectral methods. Zelinsky also supervised work on finding ways to rationally use the products of primary processing of solid fuels - coal, shale and peat. In this regard, the problem of separation of sulfur from shale resins has become important. Shale accounted for about three-quarters of the fuel reserves of the USSR, but their high sulfur content depreciated them as a raw material for motor fuel. During the war years Zelinsky found a solution to this problem by passing shale oils mixed with hydrogen over platinum or nickel on aluminum oxide at 300 °. Sulfur was removed as hydrogen sulfide. The development of petrochemistry in the USSR has led to a radical reconstruction of the oil refining industry for the production of artificial liquid fuel. As a result of scientific research, it has become possible to use not only liquid, but also solid fossil fuels as a valuable raw material for high-octane motor fuel and high-quality lubricant oils. Thus, the necessary prerequisites were created for processing the richest coal resources of Western Siberia, coal and natural gas from Ukhta and Pechora and other areas remote from the front into motor fuel. Nikolai Zelinsky died on July 31, 1953. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (Division 1), and a headstone was made by Nilolai Nikoghosyan.
Scientific activity Zelinsky's scientific activity was very versatile: his works on the chemistry of thiophene and the stereochemistry of organic dibasic acids are widely known. In the summer of 1891, Zelinsky participated in an expedition to survey the waters of the Black Sea and the Odessa estuaries on the gunboat Zaporozhets, where he proved for the first time that the hydrogen sulfide contained in the water was of bacterial origin. During the period of life and work in Odessa, Nikolai Zelinsky wrote 40 scientific papers. A number of his works were also devoted to electrical conductivity in non-aqueous solutions and to the chemistry of amino acids, but his main works were related to the chemistry of hydrocarbons and organic catalysis.
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