Boris Aleksandrovich Kazanskii

Born Apr. 13 (25), 1891, in Odessa; died Apr. 4, 1975, in Moscow. Soviet organic chemist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member 1943). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Graduated from Moscow University in 1918 (as a student of N. D. Zelinskii) and became a professor there in 1935. He became the director of the Laboratory of Catalytic Synthesis of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1936. He was the director of the institute from 1954 to 1966.

Kazanskii’s research dealt with the catalytic hydrogenolysis of the cyclic hydrocarbons from C₃ to Ci ₅, the discovery and study of the C₅ and C ₆ dehydrocyclization of paraffins, olefins, alkyl-aromatic hydrocarbons and cycloalkanes (transannular dehydrocyclization) on platinum and other catalysts, and the study of the stepwise mechanism of C ₆ dehydrocyclization of paraffins on oxide and metal catalysts. Other research by Kazanskii dealt with the addition of H ₂ to multiple bonds in hydrocarbons on metals of Group VIII and the special feature of the behavior of H ₂ depending on the nature of the metallic catalyst, and the catalytic dehydrogenation of paraffins to olefins and dienes (for the preparation of monomers for synthetic elastomers). Together with G. S. Landsberg, he developed methods for the study of individual compositions of straight-run gasoline.

Kazanskii received the State Prize of the USSR in 1949. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, as well as three other orders and several medals.