Pure chemistry Russia

Although his research activity diminished after these two major discoveries, Hess remained influential in the development of chemistry in Russia. His textbook Fundamentals of Pure Chemistry saw seven editions and remained the standard Russian text in chemistry until 1861. He remained active in teaching and mentoring younger scientists, until declining health forced his retirement in 1848. He died on December 13, 1850, at the relatively young age of forty-eight, see also Arrhenius, Svante Berzelius, Jons Jakob Thermochemistry. 

Amazingly, their discovery was based on the detection of only one atom of the new element, which decays after roughly 100 ps by alpha decay to form darmstadtium-273 (element 110). Within one minute, another five alpha decays take place producing fermium-253 (element 100). The finding has been verified in both Japan and Russia. More recently, scientists have reported the synthesis of elements 113 through 118. These results have yet to be confirmed by the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry, although the results look promising. Names and symbols have not yet been chosen for these new elements. 

The Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry of NAFU provides on the regular basis the training eourses on environmental safety for offieials, managers and specialists from the industries of northwest of Russia. During last 5 years 476 representatives of the industrial firms eompleted their training in accordance with this programme. 

A source of great controversy was the naming of element 106. U.S. chemists endorsed the name seaborgium, in honor of the U.S. chemist Glenn Seaborg, who, over his career, led teams of scientists that synthesized 10 new elements. No person has ever equaled this achievement, so the Americans were confident that their proposal for the name of element 106 would easily gain acceptance from the worldwide scientific community. To their dismay, however, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (lUPAC) endorsed the name rutherfordium, in honor of Ernest Rutherford (see Section 5.3), for element 106. Moreover, the U.S. chemists were shocked by the lUPAC proposal that element 104 be named dubnium in honor of achievements at the research laboratory in Dubna, Russia. There were serious douhts as to the validity of the Russian chemists data. 

FIGURE 7.7 The strength of germanium single crystals as a function of temperature (1) pure crystals and crystals coated with a thin film of (2) gallium, (3) copper, and (4) gold. (From Shchukin, E.D., Kolloidnyi Zh., 25, 108, 1963 Shchukin, E.D., Fiz.-Him. Meh. Mater., 12, 3, 1976 Skvortsova, Z.N. et al. Mechanics of fracture of cohesive boundaries with different concentrations of foreign inclusions, in The Successes of Colloid Chemistry and Physical-Chemical Mechanics, E.D. Shchukin (Ed.), Nauka, Moscow, Russia, 1992,... 

Since Russia did not have a strong educational tradition like that in France or Spain, a new approach, based on the periodic system—both in education and research—was smoothly implemented. Thus, the periodic system was rather easily accepted in Russia in the academic chemical communities in the 1870s and in secondary education in the 1880s. However, the periodic law was considered to be a somewhat advanced part of chemistry knowledge, so most of the purely elementary textbooks employed for a quick understanding of chemistry did not use or even mention the periodic law. 

---