Stepanov, Nikolai Ivanovich

Born June 23 (July 5), 1879, in Tara, in what is now Omsk Oblast; died May 19,1938, in Leningrad. Soviet chemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929).

A student of N. S. Kurnakov, Stepanov graduated from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1903 and became a professor there in 1918. In 1908 he proposed a method for preparing the specimens used in measuring the electrical conductivity of brittle alloys. In 1909 he established that the temperature coefficient of electrical resistance of intermetallic compounds is very close to the value of the pure metals (Stepanov’s rule). From 1935 to 1938, Stepanov developed a means for measuring the rate of transformations in metallic solid solutions, and he proposed a general method for determining the relationship between any measured property of a system in which a chemical compound is formed and the composition of the system.