Chernitsyn, Nikolai Nikolaevich

Born Nov. 20 (Dec. 2), 1883, in the village of Toikino, in what is now Perm’ Oblast; died Mar. 31 (Apr. 13), 1917, in the city of Gorlovka. Russian mining engineer.

After graduating from the St. Petersburg Institute of Mines in 1910, Chernitsyn worked at the Makeevka Mine-rescue Station, where he organized and conducted the first studies in Russia on firedamp and coal dust and the reasons for their flammability. He was the first to use a vacuum process to degas hard coals, and he demonstrated that oxygen and nitrogen are absorbed from the air by methane-bearing coal seams.

Chernitsyn was killed during rescue operations in a mine.