Mikhail Grigorevich Kucherov

Born May 22 (June 3), 1850, in Poltava Province; died June 13 (26), 1911, in St. Petersburg. Russian organic chemist.

Kucherov graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of Farming (from 1877, the St. Petersburg Institute of Forestry) in 1871 and worked there until 1910. His main works were devoted to the study of unsaturated hydrocarbons. In 1881 he discovered a method for hydrating compounds of the acetylene series in the presence of mercuric salts, which earned him the prize of the Russian Physicochemical Society in 1885. In 1915 the society instituted the Kucherov Prize, which is awarded to beginning researchers in chemistry.