Kondakov, Ivan

Kondakov, Ivan Lavrent’evich 

Born Sept. 26 (Oct. 8), 1857, in Viliusk; died Oct. 14, 1931, in Elva, near Tartu. Russian organic chemist.

A student of A. M. Butlerov, Kondakov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1884. From 1888 to 1895 he taught physiological chemistry at the University of Warsaw. In 1895 he became a professor at the University of lur’ev (now Tartu). In 1918 he moved to Prague, where he worked at the university; later he returned to Tartu.

Kondakov described (1894) the new catalytic reaction of zinc chloride with unsaturated hydrocarbons of the aliphatic series. These studies have found application in the petroleum and chemical industries. In 1899 he developed a method of preparing dimethyl butadiene and demonstrated that the latter can be converted into a rubberlike substance under exposure to light as well as in the presence of certain reagents, such as sodium. Two batches of synthetic rubber, one of hard (H) and one of soft (W) rubber (methyl rubber), were produced in Germany (1918) on the basis of Kondakov’s research. Kondakov also published works on biochemistry and pharmaceutics.

WORKS

Sinteticheskii kauchuk, ego gomologi i analogi. lur’ev, 1912.

REFERENCE

Riago, N. la. “Iz istorii khimicheskogo otdeleniia Tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta.” Tr. In-ta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR, 1956. Vol. 12: Istoriia khimicheskikh nauk i khimicheskoi tekhnologii, pp. 124–125.

A. V. PAVLUCHKOVA