Boris Dolgoplosk

Born Nov. 12 (25), 1905, in the village of Lukoml’, now in Vitebsk Oblast. Soviet chemist; specialist in the chemistry of macromolecular compounds. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1964; corresponding member, 1958). Hero of Socialist Labor (1963). Member of the CPSU since 1945.

Dolgoplosk graduated from the department of chemistry of Moscow State University in 1931. Between 1932 and 1946 he was scientific director of the Central Scientific Research Laboratory at the SK-I Plant in laroslavl’ and between 1946 and 1961, director of the All-Union Institute of Synthetic Rubber. From 1961 to 1963 he was director of a laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Physics. In 1963 he became director of a laboratory at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis. His principal works are devoted to polymerization processes, the synthesis of rubbers, and connections between the structure and properties of rubber. Dolgoplosk discovered and investigated the phenomena of oxidation-reduction initiation of radical processes (1939). He worked out the foundations of rubber synthesis by the method of emulsion polymerization (1940-52). From 1953 to 1962 he studied the stereospecific polymerization of dienes and the synthesis of stereoregular rubbers. He discovered and investigated the stereospecific catalysis of the polymerization of dienes under the influence of π-allyl complexes of the transition elements (1963-68). Dolgoplosk has received the State Prize of the USSR (1941 and 1949) and the S. V. Lebedev Prize of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1947 and 1963). He has also been awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.