Petriashvili, Vasilii Moiseevich

(also V. M. Petriev). Born 1845 in Tsilaskuri, near Tbilisi; died July 26 (Aug. 8), 1908, in Karlsbad, now Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia. Russian chemist.

After graduating from Novorossiia University in Odessa (1870), Petriashvili stayed on to teach there; he became a professor in 1879 and rector in 1907. From 1870 he conducted research in organic chemistry. He studied many azo compounds and provided a description of their structure, and he demonstrated the possibility of the existence of compounds with two OH groups on one carbon atom. From 1885 he concentrated on physical chemistry; he collected experimental data that confirmed the law of mass action. His best-known works are The Production of Vinegar (1905) and textbooks on wine-making and dairy farming written in Georgian.