Ergard Viktorovich Britske

(Bricke, Erhards Viktorovich). Born Jan. 8 (20), 1877, in Riga; died Sept. 28, 1953, in Moscow. Soviet chemist and metallurgist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1932; corresponding member, 1931).

Britske graduated from the Riga Polytechnic Institute in 1903. He was a professor at the same institute (from 1910), at the Moscow Institute of National Economy (1919-29), at the Moscow Higher Technical School (1921-31), and at the Military Academy for Protection Against Chemical Attack (1932-39). On the initiative of Britske, Ia. V. Samoilov, and D. N. Prianishnikov, the Scientific Institute of Fertilizers was founded in 1919; Britske was director of this institute from 1923-38. In 1923 he organized the technology of mineral resources division at the Institute of Applied Mineralogy and Metallurgy. In 1934 he became a member of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The principal trends in Britske’s scientific-research activities were (1) the search for new ways of using mineral resources, especially phosphates and ores of ferrous and nonferrous metals; the development of the technology of producing arsenic, potassium, and fluorine salts, sodium sulfate, and so forth; (2) physicochemical research of metallurgical and chemical engineering processes, mainly the reduction of oxides, sulfides, and phosphates; and (3) the complex elaboration of the problems of developing the productive forces of certain regions and introducing chemical processes and materials into the economy. He proposed and instituted thermal methods for the sublimation of phosphorus from ores using gases and slags, the continuous extraction of phosphoric acid from phosphorites, and the processing of titanomagnetites. He received the Lenin Prize in 1929 and the State Prize of the USSR in 1942. Britske was awarded the Order of Lenin, other orders, and various medals.