Vladimir N. Ipatieff, 1867 - 1952

Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatieff was born on 21 November 1867 in Moscow, Russia. His early career was that of a military man: in 1887 he graduated from the Mikhailovskoe artilleriiskoe uchilishche, and in 1892 from the Mikhailovskaia artilleriiskaia akademiia. But his interest in chemistry diverted him from a strictly military path. Teaching the subject at the Artillery Academy, he went on to get a doctorate from St. Petersburg University in 1907, while advancing in military rank to major general in 1910. From 1906 to 1916, he taught chemistry at the University as well, and was made a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1916. As a lieutenant general during the First World War, he served as Director of the Commission for Preparation of Explosives and Chairman of the Chemical Committee.

Following the revolution, he remained in the Soviet Union, where he founded the High Pressure Institute in 1927. But in 1931, while on a trip abroad, he decided not to return and came to the United States, where he taught at Northwestern University from 1931 to 1935. In 1939 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Ipatieff died in Chicago on 29 February 1952. Northwestern University dedicated a laboratory in his honor.

Ipatieff authored hundreds of articles on chemistry in a number of languages, as well as textbooks, such as Kolichestvennyi analiz, which he wrote while still a student (St. Petersburg, 1891); a scientific autobiography, Catalytic Reactions at High Pressures and Temperatures (New York, 1936); and personal memoirs, Zhizn' odnogo khimika (New York, 1945), translated into English as The Life of a Chemist (Stanford, 1946). He also held several hundred patents, marking his most significant contributions to science: the formulation of high-octane gasoline, the "cracking" method now used to refine gas, and other discoveries relating to catalytic reactions (especially under high pressures and temperatures), and the synthesis of petroleum and its distillates.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.

Vladimir Ipatieff Register