Zakharov, Iakov

Zakharov, Iakov Dmitrievich 

Born Oct. 3 (14), 1765, in St. Petersburg; died there Oct. 2 (14), 1836. Russian chemist. From 1790 an adjunct and from 1798 an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Zakharov was one of the first persons in Russia to give lectures in chemistry based on a rejection of the existence of phlogiston. In 1810 he worked out a system of Russian chemical nomenclature. He invented an apparatus for preparing large quantities of hydrogen (about 90 m³/hr) by passing water vapor over red hot iron. On June 30, 1804, he completed one of the first flights in an aerostat for the purpose of making scientific observations and experiments in the upper layers of the atmosphere (two months before the French scientist Gay-Lussac). Zhakarov’s flight initiated scientific aerostation.

WORKS

“Rassuzhdenie o rossiiskom khimicheskom slovoznachenii.”Umozriteinye issledovaniia Sanktpeterburgskoi akademii nauk,” 1810, vol. 2, pp. 332–54.
“O razlozhenii vody v ves’ma ogromnom snariade posredstvom raskalennogo zheleza.”Ibid., 1812, vol. 3 pp. 171–79.