Fokin, Sergei

Fokin, Sergei Alekseevich 

Born June 11 (23), 1865, in the village of Voskresenskoe, near Kazan; died May 1 (14), 1917, in Kiev. Russian organic chemist and chemical engineer.

Fokin graduated from the University of Kazan in 1890 and the Kharkov Technological Institute in 1894. From 1909 he was a professor at the Don Polytechnic Institute in Novocherkassk, and from 1913 to 1917, at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. In 1906–07, Fokin demonstrated that the addition of hydrogen to the eth-ylene bond proceeds easily and rapidly at room temperature in the presence of platinum black. He developed a technique for determining the hydrogen number of unsaturated compounds. He also investigated the hydrogenation of fats in the presence of a nickel catalyst; Russia’s first facility for hydrogenating fat was built in Kazan in 1909 under Fokin’s direction.

REFERENCE

Nesmelov, V. V. “K istorii promyshlennosti gidrogenizatsii zhirov v Rossii.” Uspekhi khimii, 1949, vol. 18, issue 4.