Nikolai Konstantinovich Pshenitsyn

Born July 1 (13), 1891, in Narva, in what is now the Estonian SSR; died Jan. 15,1961, in Moscow. Soviet inorganic chemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953).

Pshenitsyn graduated from the University of Petrograd in 1915 and in 1918 began working in various institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He studied the complex ammonium and amine chloroplatinites of silver and zinc, the sulfide compounds of iridium, and the hydrolysis of platinum metal compounds. He developed a method, now used in industry, for obtaining pure iridium and proposed procedures for analyzing both platinum-bearing slurries and the intermediates obtained in the refining of noble metals.

A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1946), Pshenitsyn was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.