Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatev

Born Nov. 9 (21), 1867, in Moscow; died Nov. 29, 1952, in Chicago. Russian organic chemist. Academician (1916–36).

A graduate (1892) of the Mikhail Artillery Academy in St. Petersburg, Ipat’ev became a professor there in 1900. From 1918 to 1927 he also worked in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the High Council of the National Economy, and the Scientific Research Chemical Institute of High Pressures, which he founded. In 1927 he was sent on an assignment abroad, from which he did not return. After 1930 he worked in the USA (for the Universal Oil Products Company) and was a professor at Northwestern University (Chicago).

Ipat’ev studied the effect of bromine on tertiary alcohols and discovered new ways of synthesizing hydrocarbons of the series C_nH_2n-2, in particular isoprene (1897). In 1900 he began research in the field of heterogeneous catalysis at high pressures and temperatures, in which he used an original instrument that he had invented (the “Ipat’ev bomb”). This research was of great importance in developing industrial catalysis, especially the hy-drogenization of fats. Ipat’ev worked on the alkylation of paraffin hydrocarbons by unsaturated hydrocarbons in order to obtain branched alkanes as high-octane components of motor fuels.