Mikhail Zaitsev
Zaitsev, Mikhail Mikhailovich
Born Aug. 30 (Sept. 9), 1845, in Kazan; died there Mar. 10 (23), 1904. Russian organic chemist. Brother of A. M. Zaitsev and student of A. M. Butlerov.
Between 1870 and 1872, Zaitsev worked out a method of reducing organic compounds with hydrogen in the presence of palladium and platinum black. He was the first to use the method of the hydrogenation of organic compounds in the liquid phase. He obtained the primary unsaturated tertiary alcohol allyldimethylcarbinol from allyl iodide by way of organozinc compounds. It was on the basis of Zaitsev’s work that his colleague S. A. Fokin in 1909–10 realized the first industrial hydrogenation of fats.