Lesson 1 Грамматика. Различные значения it
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TEXT 15 Sergei Vasiljevich Lebedev 2710 п.з. Sergei Vasiljevich Lebedev (July 25, 1874 – May 1, 1934) was a Russian/Soviet chemist and the inventor of polybutadiene synthetic rubber, the first commercially viable and mass-produced type of synthetic rubber. Lebedev was born in 1874 in Lublin and went to school in Warsaw. In 1900, he graduated from St. Petersburg University and found work at the Petersburg Margarine Factory. Starting in 1902, Lebedev moved from university to university in Russia, starting at the Saint-Petersburg Institute for Railroad Engineering. In 1904, he returned to St. Petersburg University to work under Alexei Yevgrafovich Favorskii (Stalin Prize, 1941, for contributions to the manufacture of synthetic rubber). In 1915, Lebedev was appointed Professor at the Women's Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. After 1916, he was a Professor of the Saint Petersburg Academy for Military Medicine. In 1925, he became the leader of the Oil Laboratory (after 1928, the Laboratory of Synthetic Resins) at St. Petersburg University. He died in Leningrad and is interred in Tikhvin Cemetery. Lebedev's main works are devoted to polymerisation of diene hydrocarbons. He was the first to research the polymerisation of butadiene (1910-1913). In 1910, Lebedev was the first to get synthetic rubber based on poly-butadiene. His book Research in polymerisation of by-ethylene hydrocarbons (1913) became the bible for studies of synthetic rubber. After 1914, he studied polymerisation of ethylene monomers, leading to modern industrial methods for manufacturing of butil synthetic rubber and poly-isobutylene. Between 1926 and 1928, Lebedev developed a single-stage method for manufacturing butadiene out of ethanol. In 1928, he developed an industrial method for producing synthetic rubber based on polymerisation of butadiene using metallic sodium as a catalyst. This method became the base for the Soviet industry of synthetic rubber. The Soviets lacked reliable access to natural rubber, making the manufacture of synthetic rubber important. The first three synthetic rubber plants were launched in 1932-33. For butadiene production they used grain or potato ethanol as a feedstock. It caused a number of jokes about "Russian method of making tires from potatoes". By 1940, the Soviet Union had the largest synthetic rubber industry in the world, producing more than 50,000 tons per year. During World War II, Lebedev's process of obtaining butadiene from ethyl alcohol was also used by the German rubber industry. Another important contribution of Lebedev's was the study of the kinetics of hydrogenation of ethylene hydrocarbons and the development of a number of synthetic motor oils for aircraftengines. TEXT 16 Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov 2670 п.з. Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov (19 July 1761 – 15 August 1834) was a Russian experimental physicist, self-taught electrical technician, academician of Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1809; Corresponding member since 1802). Vasily Petrov was born in the town of Oboyan (currently Kursk Oblast of Russia) in the family of a priest. He studied at a public school in Kharkov, and then at the St. Petersburg Teacher's College. In 1788, he gained a position as mathematics and physics teacher at Kolyvansko-Voskresenskoe College of Mining, in the town of Barnaul. In 1791, he was transferred to Saint Petersburg to teach mathematics and Russian at the military Engineering College, in the Izmailovsky regiment. In 1793, Petrov was invited to teach mathematics and physics at the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgery School, at the military hospital. In 1795, he was promoted to the rank of 'Extraordinary Professor'. During the next few years, he built up a comprehensive physics laboratory. His first published book, "A collection of new physical-chemical experiments and observations", was published in 1801. The bulk of this work was dedicated to the description of experiments related to combustion, as evidence against the then-popular phlogiston theory. The chapters, describing luminosity of phosphors of mineral and organic origins have elicited vivid interest in scientific circles. Petrov was able to detect the maximum temperature when phosphorus ceases to glow in open (atmospheric) air, by his numerous experiments with fluorite he was able to prove it glows due to a different reason than phosphorus. In 1802, Petrov discovered the electric arc effect, thanks to his building the world's largest and most powerful Voltaic pile at the time, which consisted of around 4,200 copper and zinc discs. In “News of Galvanic-Voltaic Experiments,” 1803, Petrov described experiments performed using the voltaic pile, detailing the stable arc discharge and the indication of its possible use in artificial lighting, melting metals for smelting and welding, obtaining pure metallic oxides, and reduction of metals from oxides mixed with powdered carbon and oils. Petrov was forgotten soon after his death and his works fell into oblivion. A copy of "News of Galvanic-Voltaic Experiments" was discovered by chance in a library in the town of Vilno near the end of the 19th century. The book was the first time in world literature that a series of important physical phenomena related to electricity were described in detail. It was not until the late 1880s that technology based on Petrov's experiments was developed with the goal of industrial usage. TEXT 17 Paul Walden 7068 п.з. Paul Walden (26 July 1863 – 22 January 1957) was a Russian and Latvian-German chemist known for his work in stereochemistry and history of chemistry. In particular he invented the stereochemical reaction known as Walden inversion and synthesized the first room-temperature ionic liquid, ethylammonium nitrate. Walden was born in Rozula, Latvia in a large peasant family. At the age of four, he lost his father and later his mother. Thanks to financial support from his two older brothers who lived in Riga (one was a merchant and another served as a lieutenant) Walden managed to complete his education – first graduated with honors from the district school in the town of Cēsis (1876), and then from the Riga Technical High School (1882). In December 1882, he enrolled into the Riga Technical University and became seriously interested in chemistry. In 1886, he published his first scientific study on the color evaluation of the reactions of nitric and nitrous acid with various reagents and establishing the limits of sensitivity of the color method to detection of nitric acid. In April 1887, he was appointed a member of the Russian Physics and Chemical Society. During this time, Walden started his collaboration with Wilhelm Ostwald (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1909) that has greatly influenced his development as a scientist. Their first work together was published in 1887 and was devoted to the dependence of the electrical conductivity of aqueous solutions of salts on their molecular weight. In 1888, Walden graduated from the University with a degree in chemical engineering and continued working at the Chemistry Department as an assistant to professor C. Bischof. Under his guidance, Walden began compiling "Handbook of Stereochemistry" which was published in 1894. In preparation of this handbook, Walden had to perform numerous chemical syntheses and characterizations which resulted in 57 journal papers on stereochemistry alone, published between 1889 and 1900 in Russian and foreign journals 57 articles on the stereochemistry. He also continued his research in the field of physical chemistry, establishing in 1889 that the ionizing power of non-aqueous solvent is directly proportional to the dielectric constant. During the summer vacations of 1890 and 1891, Walden was visiting Ostwald at the University of Leipzig and in September 1891 defended there a master thesis on the affinity values of certain organic acids. Ostwald suggested him to stay in Leipzig as a private lecturer, but Walden declined, hoping for a better career in Riga. In the summer of 1892 he was appointed assistant professor of physical chemistry. A year later he defended his doctorate on osmotic phenomena in sedimentary layers and in September 1894 became professor of analytical and physical chemistry at the Riga Technical University. He worked there until 1911 and during 1902–1905 was rector of the University. In 1895, Walden made his most remarkable discovery which was later named Walden inversion, namely that various stereoisomers can be obtained from the same compound via certain exchange reactions involving hydrogen. This topic became the basis for his habilitation thesis defended in March 1899 at St. Petersburg University. After that, Walden became interested in electrochemistry of nonaqueous solutions. In 1902, he proposed a theory of autodissociation of inorganic and organic solvents. In 1905, he found a relationship between the maximum molecular conductivity and viscosity of the medium and in 1906, coined the term "solvation". Together with his work on stereochemistry, these results brought him to prominence; in particular, he was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 and 1914. Walden was also credited as a talented chemistry lecturer. In his memoirs, he wrote: "My audience usually was crowded and the feedback of sympathetic listeners gave me strength ... my lectures I was giving spontaneously, to bring freshness to the subject ... I never considered teaching as a burden". 1896 brought reforms to the Riga Technical University. Whereas previously, all teaching was conducted in German and Walden was the only professor giving some courses in Russian, from then on, Russian became the official language. This change allowed receiving subsidies from the Russian government and helped the alumni in obtaining positions in Russia. These reforms resulted in another and rather unusual collaboration of Walden with Ostwald: Walden was rebuilding the Chemistry Department and Ostwald has sent the blueprints of the chemical laboratories in Leipzig as an example. In May 1910, Walden was elected a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and in 1911 was invited to Saint Petersburg to lead the Chemical Laboratories of the Academy founded in 1748, by Mikhail Lomonosov. He remained in that position till 1919. As an exception, he was allowed to stay in Riga where he had better research possibilities, but he was traveling, almost every week, by train, to St. Petersburg for the Academy meetings and guidance of research. In the period 1911–1915, Walden published 14 articles in the "Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences" on electrochemistry of nonaqueous solutions. In particular, in 1914 he synthesized the first room-temperature ionic liquid, namely ethylammonium nitrate (C2H5)NH+3·NO−3 with the melting point of 12 °C. After 1915, due to the difficulties caused by the World War I, political unrest in Russia and then October Revolution, Walden had reduced his research activity and focused on teaching and administrative work, taking numerous leading positions in science. Due to the political unrest in Latvia, Walden had immigrated to Germany. He was appointed as professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Rostock where he worked until retirement in 1934. In 1924 he was invited back to Riga, where he gave a series of lectures. He was offered leading positions in chemistry in Riga and in St. Petersburg, but declined. Despite his emigration, Walden retained his popularity in Russia, and in 1927 he was appointed as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Later, he also became a member of the Swedish (1928) and Finnish (1932) Academies. In his late years, Walden focused on history of chemistry and collected a unique library of over 10,000 volumes. The library and his house were destroyed during the British bombing of Rostock in 1942. Walden moved to Berlin and then to Frankfurt where he became a visiting professor of the history of chemistry at the local university. He met the end of World War II in the French Occupation Zone, cut off the Rostock University, which was located in the Soviet Zone, and thus left without any source of income. He survived on a modest pension arranged by German chemists, giving occasional lectures in Tübingen and writing memoirs. In 1949, he published his most well known book on "History of Chemistry". He died in Gammertingen in 1957 at the age of 93. His memoirs were published only in 1974. |