Nikolai Plate

Born Nov. 4, 1934, in Moscow. Soviet chemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1974). Member of the CPSU since 1972.

Plate graduated in 1956 from Moscow State University, where he studied under V. A. Kargin. Since 1956 he has been working at Moscow State University, where he was appointed head of the polymer modification laboratory in 1966. At the same time, since 1963, he has been working at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Plate determined the principal behavioral mechanism in graft and block copolymers as compared with the properties of their polymer components and formulated the principles of polymer modification through reactions in macromolecular chains. He developed the statistical theory on the reactivity of links in a polymer chain, taking into account the effect of the adjacent groups. Plate also studied the structure and physicochemical properties of comb-shaped polymers.