Who was the "non -return" Ipatiev

Among Russian scientists who emigrated in the United States, there are several really great circumstances whose names should be remembered. These are Georgy Antonovich Gamov (1904–1968), physicist and astrophysicist, author of the concept of relict radiation and triplet genetic code; Vladimir Kozmich Zvorykin (1889–1982), inventor of an electron microscope and television; Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (1889–1972), one of the "fathers" of modern aviation, the author of the first four -engine aircraft, flying boats and helicopters; and his equal to him Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatiev (1867–1952), a chemist-organic-catalytic, to whom this essay is dedicated.

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Academician Ipatiev is the father of modern heterogeneous catalysis in organic chemistry and petrochemistry, the author of catalytic cracking, which is based on the receipt of modern motor fuels and polymeric materials, and at the same time the great organizer of the chemical science and industry of Russia. According to the wealth of events, his life path is worthy of Shakespeare's pen. Shakespeare divided events into actions, here we divide them into stages, highlighting five characteristic stages of Ipatiev’s life.

Stage 1. Before the outbreak of World War I. Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatiev (hereinafter for the brevity of V. N.) was born in a famous noble family on November 9 (21), 1867 in Moscow on Presnya. Father is a successful architect, mother is a graduate of a private boarding house, after which she passed the exam in Moscow State University to the rights of a teacher and was engaged in raising three children.

In 1892, Ipatiev graduated from the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy in St. Petersburg, where he defended in 1895 a dissertation awarded the prize named after A. M. Butlerova (re -defense - in 1908 at St. Petersburg University). Since 1900, he took up heterogeneous catalysis of hydrocarbons and their derivatives in a wide range of temperatures and pressures. He discovered many new catalysts and catalytic reactions, the first to synthesize isoprene, divine, polyethylene. By the beginning of the First World War, V.N.-a famous chemist scientist, simultaneously Major General (1911) and member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1914), the largest specialist in heterogeneous catalysis in organic chemistry and oil refining.

Stage 2. The First World War until November 1917. In February 1915, he headed the commission on the harvesting of explosives, which in April 1916 was transformed into the Chemical Committee under the Main Artillery Administration (GAU). Members of the committee became almost all the most prominent chemists of Russia. The Committee was responsible for supplying the front by military chemistry products (explosive substances, gunpowder, flamethrower, gas masks, poisonous substances, fuels-lubricants, pharmaceuticals, etc.), had controllers at all chemical plants, led the construction of new plants, including two dozen new benzorals (raw materials for explosive substances; the first one was launched in; August 1915), the first plant of nitric acid synthesis in Russia (was launched in 1917), obtaining sulfuric acid, powders, etc. In fact, this committee is a prototype of a modern military-industrial complex. If at the beginning of the war the army experienced a huge shortage of shells, then V.N. will write: “ We could freely continue the war for a very long time, because by January and February 1917 we had a huge supply of explosives in millions of various shells and, in addition, more than a million pounds of free explosives.” These reserves were enough for four years of fratricidal civil war ...

V.N. as the head of the committee was directly related to the General Staff and often reported directly to Nicholas II, including under personal meetings. The king, like government and scientific circles, noted the merits of the scientist: V. N. became Lieutenant General, elected to the actual members of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences (1916).

Stage 3. From the revolution of 1917 to the death of Lenin. Inwardly not accepting the October Revolution and remaining on the beliefs a supporter of the constitutional monarchy, V. N., after severe thoughts, decided that only the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, were able to save Russia from destruction and collapse. He refused numerous offers to go to the west or join the White Army. The decision of the prominent royal dignitary to serve the new government is explainable only by the fact that he always served not the supreme power, but to the people and Russia. And loyalty to the authorities and the state considered a secondary and optional affair. And it was this form of patriotism that was an unbending core of the whole complex life of V.N.

In November 1917, L. Ya. Karpov, who was in charge of chemistry in the new government, offered him cooperation in the demobilization and further development of the chemical industry. V.N. replied: " I am ready to do everything in my power in order to save the chemical industry that we created during the war." In January 1918, he collected the chemical committee, where he transferred a conversation with Karpov and called for cooperation with the new government. He had to make a lot of efforts to convince representatives of Russian science to give strength, knowledge and experience in the construction of a new Russia. The composition of the chemical committee was preserved.

Since December 1917, V. N. - Chairman of the Commission under the Chemical Department of the Supreme Economic Council for the demobilization and mobilization of the chemical industry, member of the GAU Council. In March 1918, he was appointed chairman of the technical department of the military-economic department of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, and in April 1918, also the chairman of the chemical commission. industry under the government. In 1919, the commission was transformed into the Technical Council of the Chemical Industry at the Supreme Economic Council; V.N. - Chairman of this Council.

After the death of L. Ya. Karpov (January 6, 1921), V. N. became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council and a member of the state plan, led the Glavkhim - the germ of the future of the Ministry of Chemical Industry, became a member of the government. In 1921, he repeatedly met with Lenin, who called him the head of our chemical industry and gave him a card blanche for negotiations and decisions on chemistry inside and outside the RSFSR. In the most difficult situations, he suggested calling or telegraph to him personally. In 1922, when V. N. was in a foreign commander, Glavkhim was abolished without his knowledge and discussed the issue of the withdrawal of V. N. from the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council. Lenin who found out about this instructed that " Ipatiev was part of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council with any number of its members."

In 1920, Ipatiev was organized by the Institute of Applied Chemistry, the Chemical and Farmatsut Institute, the Institute of Fertilizer and Insectophycides, the Radium Institute, etc. In 1929, he became the director of the new high-pressure institution (IAVD).

Stage 4. After the death of Lenin to emigration. In May 1927, as a major event-the holiday of world science-the 60th anniversary of V.N. was celebrated, he received the title of Honored Scientist and Prize named after V.I. Lenin.

But, despite the triumphal anniversary, the situation around V. N. during these years began to become more as a growing one . In 1926, he was taken out of the squad of the Supreme Economic Council and the leadership of chemistry through the Red Army (he learned about this from newspapers). The arrests of colleagues, close friends, students began, many were shot. The majority of engineers and scientists were arrested, whom V.N. sent abroad to study “on the spot” of equipment purchased for Russia. In 1929-1930, the arrest of colleagues - E. I. Shuttal and L.K. Ramzin caused a special alarm. The first - a student of V.N. - in January 1929, was elected by the Academy of Sciences, and a month later, arrested. The closed court sentenced him to execution, but the verdict was replaced by 10-year-old single imprisonment; November 31, 1931 he died. L.K. Ramzin - one of the largest heating equipment of the twentieth century, the director of the institute, a member of the State Planning Commission, the Supreme Economic Council, and one of the main developers of the Goerlo plan - was arrested in October 1930 and became the main figure in the loud public process of the so -called Prom Party, which he allegedly led. Investigators of the GPU have knocked out of it in the vast "sabotage" activities, on the basis of which more than two thousand engineers and scientists were arrested. At the process, which took place at the end of 1930, L.K. Ramsin recognized all the accusations, sentenced to execution, replaced by a 10-year imprisonment. Note that he served the conclusion in one of the first “sharak” of the GPU, where he was engaged in the creation of a high -precision boiler of high power. Such a boiler with remarkable characteristics for that time was launched in 1933-1934, Ramzin was amnestied for this, in 1943 he received the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and in 1947 (by the 60th anniversary)-the Order of Lenin (died in 1952). In 1991, L.K. Ramzin and other participants in the Prompartia were completely rehabilitated, and the process itself was recognized as falsification.

V.N. intercessors about the liberation of Shuttal, Ramzin, etc., vouching for their honesty, but to no avail. Clouds are thickened over him, more and more often he is called in the GPU, where they recall the general past, proximity to Nicholas II, contacts with Trotsky and other “enemies of the people” and “pests”. Friends warn of close arrest. What was left to do? Work without sparing strength, up to a night knock on the door?

Stage 5. Emigration. In 1930, V. N. made a firm, but extremely difficult decision for himself: to go abroad and for the time being not to return. In June 1930, he received a personal invitation to the International Energy Congress in Berlin. The paperwork was delayed, but one of the delegates was arrested. In the delegation of the USSR, a place was freed, and it was inconvenient to leave it in the presence of a personal invitation of V. N. (in addition, the GPU knows that V. N. had an almost incurable disease - throat cancer). In June 1930, V. N., together with his wife, went to Berlin, and then received permission to stay for treatment for a period of one year. In June-August 1930, he visited France and England, arrived in the USA in September, first in New York, then in Chicago, where he was successfully operated on. Here he began to give a lecture course in Catalise at the University of Chicago and began experimental work on a contract with Universal Oil Products Co (UOP) in the laboratory equipped for him.

In 1931, V.N. was extended for three years, but since 1935, the government and the USSR Academy of Sciences ultimatively demand its return. And the information coming from the USSR is terrible anxiety. In 1931, a well-known acquaintance of the Academician-physicist P.P. Lazarev was arrested and exiled to him, in the summer of 1936 Oselmovan in the press Academician-mathematician N. N. Luzin. In 1934, the arrests of employees of the Institute of IFD began. First, the deputy Ipatiev was arrested - prof. G. A. Razuvaeva (after the death of Stalin, he was rehabilitated, laureate of the Lenin Prize (1958), academician (1966), Hero of social labor (1969)). Then they arrested and later shot the oldest of the students of V.N. - prof. N. A. Orlova. Friends persistently hint V.N. that his arrest is inevitable upon return. And in his answers, he honestly sets out the reasons for the return to the USSR: obligations to the company, illness and age (69 years), favorable conditions for work, the results of which can be used in the USSR. But on December 29, 1936, the general meeting of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR decided to deprive V. N. Ipatiev and A. E. Chichibabin of the title of academicians, and on January 5, 1937, the CEC deprived them of Soviet citizenship. The entry into the USSR was forever forbidden (on December 29, 1990, the general meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences posthumously restored the membership of V. N.).

And V.N. remains in the USA, continuing on the basis of the available inset successfully solving the problems of catalysis for oil and organic chemistry. In 1935, he was the first to propose an industrial catalytic cracking to increase the output and quality of gasoline and other motor fuels due to the alkylation of paraffins by olefins and selective polymerization of butylene to iso -octane. This invention was almost immediately introduced into industry. In the same year, Shell began to produce 3000 m3/hour of such products. 1935-1936 are considered a time of mass implementation of catalytic cracking in the US oil refining, and the father of such a cracking and generally the US petrochemistry lawfully consider Ipatiev. These works led to a number of outstanding inventions, which quickly found a wide world practical application. First of all, it is the synthesis and polymerization of ethylene, propylene, divinil, isoprene and other most common polymers. Therefore, V.N. is simultaneously considered one of the creators of the modern industry of polymers.

But the most glorifying its inventions are associated with the production of highly octane gasolines and other motor fuels , the peculiarity of which is high anti -dyatonal resistance, which allows highly formed engine operating modes, the most important for aviation, sports cars, etc., for example, in aviation, improves all flight characteristics of the aircraft (speed, carrying capacity, take -off speed, etc.) 20–40%. In foreign literature, it was repeatedly noted that it was highly octane Ipatievsky gasoline that ensured the victory of British aviation over the German Luftwaffe during the “air war” over England in 1940. The advantage of the British “Spitfires” and “Hurricane” was only that they were refueling Ipatievsky gasoline with an octane number of 100, and German aircraft used fuel with an octane number 87. Since 1943, and Soviet aircraft began to switch to Ipatiev gasoline received from the United States for Lend-Lisa (total supplies-1.187 million tons). American planes were also supplied, flying only on such gasoline. It was on such a fighter Bell P-39 Airacobra with Ipatiev gasoline A. I. Pokryshkin since the spring of 1943 shot down 48 aircraft and later flew only at Airkobra. On the same fighters, many illustrious Soviet aces fought, and in this - the indirect participation of V. N. in achieving victory. And he repeatedly asked the USSR ambassador Gromyko to allow him to return, offered his experience of a military chemist, but each time he received a refusal (for more details, for example, [5–7], in the same place - about the fate of his brother Nikolai, “Ipatiev’s houses”, where Nicholas II was shot, the story with the Nobel Prize, etc.).

The last attempt to return was made in 1951, the disease and death prevented its implementation. Until the very end (November 29, 1952), Ipatiev worked in the laboratory. And on his grave plate there was an inscription: “ In Memory of Russian Genius Vladimir Nikolaevich iPatieff. The Inventor of Octane Gasoline. " He was also a laureate of the highest US award for chemists-the Golden Medal of Gibbs (1940), and only S. Arrenius (1911), M. Sklodovskaya-Kuri (1921) and the German R. M. Wilshtetter (1933, studies of chlorophyll) were awarded from foreigners of such honor.

Vladimir Fenelonov,
doct. chem. sciences, professor of Novosibirsk State University

1. Ipatiev V.N. The life of one chemist. Memories. New York, 1945 (first Russian reprint: Academician V.N. Ipatiev. In 2 book metro: Kalvis, 2011.

2. Ipatieff vn My Life in the United States; The Memoirs of a Chemist. Northwestern University Press, 1959.

3. Kuznetsov V.I., Maksimenko A. M. Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatiev, 1867–1952. M.: Science, 1992.

4. Salzberg M. Portraits: three lives of academician Ipatiev // Chemistry and Life, No. 10, 11, 12 for 1992.

5. Fenelonov V. B. Catalytic Bulletin, 2017, No. 4 (84), p. 4–19.

6. Fenelonov V. B. Fen.nsu.ru/lobaz/ipatiev%2021.11.2017.pppt

7. Fenelonov V. B. The life of one chemist // Science of first hand, 2017, No. 5/6 (76), p. 18–39.