Shorygin, Pavel

Born Apr. 16 (28), 1881, in the village of Gorki, Kovrov District, Vladimir Province; died Apr. 29, 1939, in Moscow. Soviet organic chemist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939; corresponding member, 1932).

Shorygin graduated in 1906 from the Moscow Higher Technical School, where he then worked from 1906 to 1910. From 1910 to 1918 he was an engineer at a textile factory in Moscow. Between 1919 and 1925 he was a professor at the Moscow Veterinary Institute and the Moscow Forest Engineering Institute, and between 1925 and 1939 he was a professor at the D. I. Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering. From 1931 to 1939 he was scientific director of the Moscow Scientific Research Institute of Synthetic Fibers.

Shorygin’s main works dealt with the chemistry of organoso-dium compounds. Shorygin discovered the process of metallization (the direct substitution of sodium or potassium for hydrogen in hydrocarbons and their derivatives [Shorygin reaction]), the decomposition of ethers by the action of metallic sodium, and two new types of intramolecular rearrangements of ethers—car-binolic and phenolic. The research carried out by Shorygin on the chemistry of hydrocarbons, begun in 1924, terminated in the synthesis of many new cellulose ethers and esters and their derivatives. Under Shorygin’s guidance, many problems in the manufacture of synthetic fibers and pulp and paper were solved and methods of synthesizing valuable perfumes were developed.