Abstract
Looking back over the history of the electrochemistry in the twentieth century, it is important to understand that the pre-war generation of scientists of the former Soviet Union did not yet feel that they were living in a Divided World. The scientific world remained united for them. They knew Western European languages, they had published papers in Western European journals (mostly Germans), and they kept connections with Western scientists by mail. “Why should I be afraid of Germans? I know Tamman, I know Nernst—very nice people they are”. These were the words of Prof. Plotnikov according to Prof. Yuriy Fialkov’s memory. Plotnikov decided to stay in Kiev during the Nazi occupation in 1941. It was a tragic decision which ruined his scientific carrier and life—because he did not understand that, by then, the world was in fact already divided.
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Notes
- 1.
For the history of IGICh, see www.ionc.kar.net.
- 2.
There was his own typist whose formal position was a technician. She typed his manuscripts, then it was corrected and improved, and after that the manuscript was retyped again. Sometimes he himself typed his manuscripts at home. I remember his portable foreign-made typewriter in the apartment on Vladimirskaya Str., which was the subject of my envy (no common citizen could buy such thing in the USSR).
- 3.
Surely, the larger part of his works was written by his co-authors; however, he read and corrected each paper of the co-workers.
- 4.
Then this institute was known as Institute of Chemistry of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. During the war, in 1941–1944, he was working in the Chemical Institute of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, where the institute was evacuated from Kiev.
- 5.
Upon my memory, five more members are absent in this photo.
- 6.
One of my friends, being a postgraduate student of A. V. Gorodyskiy , was trying to achieve “limiting overpotential” regime for the process of aluminium electrolysis in chloride melts. After about 2 years of experimental work, his results were negative. Thus, he was blamed as incompetent and fired. Later on, he prepared and defended his thesis on the electrochemical behaviour of aluminium complexes in chloride melts under the supervision of Yu. K. Delimarskiy .
- 7.
He stayed in Kiev during the Nazi occupation and worked together with academician Plotnikov as scientific secretary of the Chemical Institute. Upon my knowledge, no repressions were applied from the Soviet authorities either for him or for his son.
- 8.
To be exact, he became a Ukrainian scientist since 1960, when he headed the chair of electrochemical technology at Kiev Polytechnic Institute, now National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (NTUU “KPI”). Before that, he received higher education and worked first in Russia and then in India (see Biographical Reference).
- 9.
Record of Chemical Progress (1964), 23, #1, 33
- 10.
There is a wide gap in the biography from the Berlin to Irkutstk, which I am not able to completely fill. His father, Ivan Aleksandrovich Antropov (1888–1938), was a professor of law who has studied in 1912/1914 in Berlin, Germany (which explains the birthplace of L. I. Antropov ). In 1918, Ivan A. Antropov was a legal consultant of the Temporary All-Russian Government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak . In the 1930s, he was the head of the legal department of a power company in Sverdlovsk. In 1938, during the great purges, he was arrested and sentenced to death [Shishkin V. I. (2002) K istorii gosudarstvennogo perevorota v Omske (18–19 noyabrya 1918). Vestnik NGU. Seriya: istoriya, filologiya. Vol 1, No 3, Novosibirsk, pp 88–97]. For anybody knowing Soviet history, it is clear that the life of L. I. Antropov must have been severely affected in this or that way by his father’s vitae.
- 11.
Being an outstanding scientist by himself, Prof. Esin became the “godfather” for two distinguished Ukrainian electrochemists—L. I. Antropov (see above) and B. F. Markov .
- 12.
Thus, the research directions of B. F. Markov in Kiev had nothing in common with his early studies in Sverdlovsk. As far as I remember, he never even mentioned the “Esin -Markov effect” or other works related to the electrochemistry of aqueous solutions in his biography. I do not know why. My guess is that he did not considered this early student work to be significant in comparison with his profound studies of ionic melts.
- 13.
According to my memory, his words were as follows: “It is useless to develop the thermodynamics in our Institute. If you need any thermodynamic data, you should find them in literature”.
- 14.
I know this fact from the memory of my older colleagues at IGICh and KPI. However, working recently in the archive of IGICh, I found no information on the candidate thesis of Markov in his personal dossier dated in 1956. Neither abstract nor supervisor nor even title—nothing at all! Evidently, the name of V. A. Plotnikov was committed to oblivion by official Soviet science till that time. I imagine that the Markov ’s decision to become a student of the disfavoured old academician required a great deal of courage from him.
- 15.
B. F. Markov was an outstanding experimenter. I remember the laboratory furnaces of his design with platinum thermoresistor, which could keep the working temperature with the precision less than 0.1 °C. The regulating electric circuitry for this furnace was invented by B. F. Markov together with old IGICh’s technician Moisei Abramovich Mednik.
- 16.
The official formulation was “dismissed due to the shortening of staff”.
- 17.
I remember one of them as follows. It was in 1982 or so, and we were waiting together for the audience with the director of IGICh academician Gorodyskiy (everybody for his own purposes, of course). To kill the time, Boris Fedorovich begins to tell his fishing tale: “Just imagine, Sasha! Yesterday I caught a pike like this (shows by his arms the size of more than 1 meter). I put it in the grass on the shore, it stiffened. When coming back home, I used it as a walk stick. So, I am walking, and everybody watches me, and everybody envies!”
- 18.
Prof. Konstantin Kazdobin remembers the specific way of the first presentation of the model in 1968. The scientific seminar was carried out in tourist tents on the bank of the Desna River. The idea was supported by outstanding physicist Anatoliy R. Regel, director of the Ioffe Institute for Semiconductor from Leningrad, and chemist Yu. K. Delimarskiy .
- 19.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19650619&id=d1dYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=n_cDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7373,4943389. This information is a courtesy of Arkadiy A. Furman from Chicago.
- 20.
In turn, I am grateful for the help of many of the Velikanov ’s students. Especially I acknowledge the valuable help of Prof. Oleg Mustiatsa and Dr. Vladimir Lisin—they provided me with photos and basic biographical information.
- 21.
Nobody could possess a position higher than head of department if he was not a member of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.
References
Gorodyskiy AV (1988) Voltamperometry: kinetics of stationary electrolysis (in Russian). Naukova Dumka, Kiev
Antropov LI (1965) Theoretical electrochemistry (in Russian). Vysshaya Shkola, Moscow
Esin OA, Markov BF (1939) Actaphysicochim URSS 10:353
Delimarskiy YK, Markov BF (1960) Electrochemistry of molten salts (in Russian). Metallurgizdat, Moscow
Delimarskiy YK, Kuzyakin EB, Andriiko AA (1977) Dopovidi Akademii Nauk Ukrainy (Proc Ukr Acad Sci) Ser B 3:228
Markov BF, Volkov SV, Prisiazhnyi VD et al (1985) Thermodynamic properties of molten salt systems (in Russian). Naukova Dumka, Kiev
Andriiko AA, Andriyko YO, Nauer GE (2013) Many-electron electrochemical processes. In: Scholz F (ed) Monographs in electrochemistry. Springer, Berlin
Acknowledgements
Many people helped me in the preparation of this chapter sharing their memory, documents and photos: Profs. K. Kazdobin, A. Omelchuk and M. Zakharchenko and Dr V. Zaychenko from IGICh, Prof. O. Mustiatsa from Kiev Transport University and Profs. I. Astrelin and M. Donchenko from KPI. I am grateful for their help. Special thanks to Prof. F. Scholz for his finding about the fate of Antropov ’s father and many other valuable suggestions.
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Andriiko, A.A. (2015). Before the Iron Curtain Came Down: Electrochemistry and Electrochemists in Kiev in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century. In: Scholz, F. (eds) Electrochemistry in a Divided World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21221-0_7
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