Food projects of Academician Nesmeyanov. Alexander Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov - Biography
In the 1960s, the former president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Nesmeyanov, developed a method for producing yeast from oil. His first artificial product is the protein "black caviar". A staunch vegetarian himself, he proposed not to drive oil abroad, but to use it to feed the Soviet people.
Alexander Nesmeyanov was born in 1899. After the February Revolution, he joined the Social Revolutionaries, after the October Revolution - to its left faction, by the end of the Civil Revolution - went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. A huge moral shock for him was the Great Famine of 1920-22. Nesmeyanov went with a food detachment to seize bread from the peasants. Starvation, cannibalism, the loss of human appearance by the peasants shocked him. He swore to himself to devote his life to solving the food problem not only in Russia, but throughout the world.
Nesmeyanov successfully climbed the career ladder of a chemist, survived the Stalinist purges, and in 1951 headed the Soviet Academy of Sciences. However, in 1961, he had a strong quarrel with the head of the country, Nikita Khrushchev, and was removed from his post.
One of the main disagreements with Khrushchev was Nesmeyanov's original vision of how to solve the food problem in the country. If the head of the Soviet state believed that the plowing of virgin lands, land reclamation, breeding of new varieties of plants and breeds of livestock could feed the Soviet people, then the scientist - the intensification of chemical production. The chemist believed that even a poor, war-ravaged country would take decades to develop agriculture, while the Soviet people wanted to eat a lot and cheaply right now.
Since the second half of the 1950s, under the leadership of Nesmeyanov, chemical and biological institutes have been working on creating food from hydrocarbons.
The same scientific process was going on not only in the USSR, but also in other developed countries. Nesmeyanov and the Nobel Prize winner, the Englishman Alexander Todd, met in the summer of 1955 at a meeting of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry and discovered in a conversation that both considered it desirable to train young chemists abroad. In the autumn of the same year, Alexei Kosygin, deputy chairman of the Soviet government, came to England, visited Cambridge and listened to Todd's proposal to accept two trainees from the USSR. As a result, in the fall of 1956, the first trainees from the USSR arrived in Cambridge - chemists N. Kochetkov and E. Mistryukov.
Nesmeyanov's interest in the synthesis of food had a second reason. Even before the Revolution, he became a staunch vegetarian. The problem he wanted to solve was to get food protein without killing animals. Tatyana Nikolaevna, his sister, recalls: “At the age of nine, Shura refused to eat meat, and at the age of twelve he became a complete vegetarian, refusing fish as well. It was based on the firm belief that animals should not be killed. This was not inspired by anyone, and all his life he did not change the word given to himself once in childhood.
By 1964, Nesmeyanov developed and mastered by the industry a method for preparing protein granular caviar, similar to sturgeon caviar, based on milk proteins (more precisely, milk production waste - skim milk).
Another direction is the cultivation of yeast on oil hydrocarbons and the production of food protein from them. And another way, purely chemical, is the synthesis of amino acids that form the basis of proteins. This work was carried out at INEOS (Institute of Organoelement Compounds) and at some institutes in Leningrad. A special building for food synthesis laboratories was even attached to INEOS.
Doctor of Chemical Sciences G.L. Slonimsky recalled how this process went:
“For the first time I heard about this problem at a meeting of the scientific council of our institute, at which Nesmeyanov outlined all its aspects in detail. To my question why A.N. did not say anything about the taste of food, he replied that the taste is of no interest, since it is easily created by a mixture of four components - sweet, salty, sour and bitter, such as sugar, common salt, some food acid and caffeine or quinine. I immediately objected, noting that taste is determined not only by the chemical action of food components on taste buds, but also by the mechanical properties of food, its coarse and fine structure. The same puff cake - in its usual form and passed through a meat grinder - will taste different. A.N. immediately agreed and asked who would be able to work on this? I replied that since the main problem of our laboratory is the study of the physical structure and mechanical properties of polymers and their solutions, and proteins and polysaccharides are also polymers, I am ready to start these studies.
(Academician Nesmeyanov (right) tasting artificial black caviar)
A few days after a detailed discussion with A.N. in our laboratory, we set up the first experiments on the formation of pasta from food protein. When I showed them to A.N., he immediately tried it, said “Nothing” and was obviously pleased with the result.
A few days later, in a conversation with me, he dropped: “You know, if you are already seriously engaged in this, then I think you should start with something that would stun people and break through the wall of distrust in artificial food!” When I asked what he meant, A.N. dreamily said: “Well, for example, granular caviar!”
I immediately had an idea how to mold the eggs, so I replied that I would try to do it. Already in 1964, we made the first samples of artificial granular caviar from skimmed milk in the laboratory. And then the Institute developed the technology of its production. Since then, this cheap and tasty product called “Protein Grained Caviar” (based on casein, protein from broken eggs and other food waste) has been made in Moscow and other cities. A.N. was very pleased, but scolded me for the fact that caviar contains gelatin - he was a staunch vegetarian.
Nesmeyanov also tried to fundamentally, ideologically justify the production of artificial food. In one of his articles he wrote:
“Nature did not set itself the goal of feeding man. Once upon a time, the sun lit up on its own. But unlike the sun, alfalfa, and calves, we have intelligence. We can make a calculation of the food chain and come to the conclusion that it is difficult to feed properly with such a chain. We need to fix it, improve it!
With the old farming, only one boy in ten can be fed veal chops. For the share of the rest - rice porridge or soybeans.
What will we win?
Reliability first. There are no crop failures. We have won hygiene. Synthetic food is fresher: it does not need to be stored for a long time.
Synthetic food can be accurately dosed, adapted to the needs of the average person in general and this individual in particular. The product contains a medically established proportion of fats, proteins and carbohydrates, and there are no more fat people with obesity of the heart, no more diseases of the stomach and liver. And for the patient, you can choose special diets.
The third benefit, but not the last one, is the moral one.
Eating meat, we are forced to kill millions of bulls, rams, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens, accustoming thousands and thousands of people to cold-blooded bloodshed, to bloody and dirty work. And this does not really fit with the upbringing of love for nature, kindness, cordiality. There will be meat, but without bloodshed - artificial, made of polymers. There will be animals, but in parks, in the wild.”
In another of his works, “Artificial and Synthetic Food” (1969), he described how such food is created:
“First of all, it is necessary to synthesize the most expensive products - protein products, primarily the replacement of meat and dairy products.
In the microcosm, among algae, yeast and non-pathogenic microorganisms, there are cultures that are rich sources of complete proteins. Thus, yeast cultures are known that are very rich in complete protein, but are still not used for cooking. They are grown on cheap raw materials. For example, crops such as Torula and Candida tropicalis, the basis for the growth of which are the waste of the alcohol industry and liquid paraffins of oil.
The cultivation of yeast on hydrocarbons is currently very well developed. The resulting biomass contains about 40% proteins. The action of proteolytic enzymes on this biomass leads to the hydrolysis of protein molecules. The amount of chromatographically pure amino acids can be isolated from the product thus obtained, for which the method of displacement ion-exchange chromatography is used.
In order to use such yeast in human nutrition, of course, it is necessary to completely remove from them all impurities that could get from the culture medium, and to isolate and then purify the most nutritionally valuable components. The most nutritionally valuable component of yeast is protein, or rather a mixture of proteins that can be isolated in the form of pure proteins or their constituent L-amino acids.
To use proteins isolated from microbiological raw materials directly for food purposes, it is necessary to eliminate the undesirable factors inherent in yeast (unpleasant color, smell, foreign taste). In terms of their biological value, such proteins can be brought to the level of the best proteins of animal origin. It was possible, for example, to show that the isolated total protein of Micrococcus glutamicus does not differ in amino acid composition from the protein of chicken eggs.
Academician Nesmeyanov in the late 1960s calculated that yeast "meat", literally grown on oil, could be brought up to 40-60 kopecks per kilogram at cost, "butter" and "cheese" from oil - about 80 kopecks. These prices were 3-4 times lower than in retail. He also paraphrased the famous phrase of his colleague, chemist Mendeleev, “Stoking a furnace with oil is the same as heating with banknotes” - “Selling oil abroad means depriving the country of food.”
But the academician's idea had a downside, or rather several. In the case of the start of large-scale production of proteins from oil in Soviet agriculture, 70-80% of collective farmers would be unnecessary. Where to put them? Again, several tens of millions of people unprepared for this city?
Nesmeyanov himself wrote about this:
“About a third of our workers are employed in agriculture. Add to them drivers and railroad workers transporting products; add workers of tractor, combine, automobile factories; add the food and canning industry, warehouse workers. It turns out that at least half of the able-bodied people are employed in our food industry. And we still did not take into account the hands of a woman, busy for two hours a day peeling potatoes, vegetables, fussing with meat, boiled, fried, turned, baked.
What should these hands be applied to, where will tens of millions of liberated workers go? At least for service. It is more convenient to live, more pleasant to live, if there are many shops, and there are many sellers, if there are many cinemas and theaters, many laundries and hairdressers, many buses and trolleybuses, many hospitals and many nurseries, kindergartens and schools.
When there are free hands (and heads), there will be free time. It's interconnected. If a society spends half of its labor on food, then the average member of this society spends half of his working time (and earnings) on food. But when the labor of producing food is reduced to a minimum, the time required for this production is reduced to a minimum. Time is freed up.
For what? This is where it gets up, a difficult task has already arisen on a national scale: to teach people to use time wisely, to open their eyes to the world.”
The second problem is that the USSR, starting from the late 1960s, urgently needed a currency: for the purchase of machine tools, consumer goods and the same food - grain. By the way, Nesmeyanov did not propose to synthesize bread from oil (as well as carbohydrates in general, as well as fruits and vegetables) - their cost was lower when grown on the ground than in a test tube.
Finally, the top authorities believed (apparently, reasonably) that the Soviet people were not yet ethically ready to eat ersatz instead of real meat and dairy products, and, on the contrary, he would perceive the appearance of such “products” as a weakness of the state (“he cannot properly feed”) , not its scientific strength.
The projects of Academician Nesmeyanov remained at the level of laboratory developments. Although in the late 1970s, when the food problem worsened, he proposed a new idea - to get protein from algae (chlorella, etc.), but in January 1980 Nesmeyanov died, and apart from him there were no more scientific authorities whose administrative weight could push through even pilot production of ersatz.
More on the Nutrition Interpreter's Blog.
“Although in primitive life, especially in hunting and shepherding, much of the most necessary for people should have been directly obtained from animals, but today humanity has become so free from this sad necessity that the need to completely get rid of food, clothing and everything else from the need is conceivable. in any animals for the continuation of the whole development of people” (p. 3)
DI. Mendeleev
“Imagine that one boy lived a whole year of his life, from 12 to 13 years old, eating nothing but veal. The calves are grazing in a field sown with alfalfa, the field, of course, is illuminated by the sun.
Why, then, did 20 million plants grow only 8 tons of beans in a field of 4 hectares and feed less than five calves with a total weight of about 1 ton? Why did 1 ton of live weight provide only one boy weighing 48 kg, and even he gained only 2-3 kg in weight per year?
Yes, because the sun warms the field not at all in order to grow alfalfa, and alfalfa does not grow in order to be chewed by calves, and they do not run around the field in order to become chops. They grow up to preserve their biological species, and in order to preserve the species, they need to defend themselves, their own lives. This requires hoofed legs, horns, skin, teeth capable of chewing alfalfa, but in themselves inedible. Calves need, among other things, energy to run around the field, walk from plant to plant, and escape from predators. The energy for movement is also provided by the eaten alfalfa, which, in turn, grows to preserve its alfalfa genus. And for this, she needs not only beans, but also leaves that capture solar energy and carbon dioxide, she needs stems that support the leaves, and even roots that are completely tasteless, but without them you will not get food and moisture. In addition, the plant spends an abyss of energy to evaporate water - about a thousand liters per kilogram of dry weight. This wastefulness is necessary in order to supply moisture up the stem to the leaves, it is also necessary in order to create a microclimate inside each bush. The plant, as it were, sweats, protecting itself from heat and dryness by evaporation. Evaporation is what the sun's rays are used for. Everywhere loss, loss, loss...
Of all the solar energy falling on the field, alfalfa uses only 0.24% for its growth. From the energy accumulated by alfalfa, calves use 8% for their growth. From the energy accumulated by the calves, the boy uses 0.7% for his growth. (pp. 12-14)
Nature did not set itself the goal of feeding man. Once upon a time, the sun lit up on its own. Its light falls on nearby planets (also not all, a billionth fraction); the alfalfa absorbs it to maintain its species, the calves maintain their species. We - people - are the final link in this ecological chain. But unlike the sun, alfalfa, and calves, we have intelligence. We can make a calculation of the food chain and come to the conclusion that it is difficult to feed properly with such a chain. We need to fix it, improve it!
We need to improve, among other things, because there is not enough land on the globe to allocate four hectares per consumer. The calculation is simple: 4 billion inhabitants, land area - 15 billion hectares. But 90% of the land is ice, swamps, rocky mountains, sandy deserts. Approximately 1.6 billion hectares are suitable for processing, i.e. 0.4 hectares per person.
So only one boy in ten is supposed to be fed veal chops. For the share of the rest - rice porridge or soybeans. (p. 81)
What are the options for chemical rationalization, simplification of the path, elimination of links?
Four can be identified:
1. Plant food from non-edible plants
2. Animal food without an animal link
3. Food from cells, no animals and no plants.
4. Food from molecules, without cells, without plants and without animals.
There are reliable, proven ways to obtain food - from plants and from animals. Chemistry adds four more to these two:
1. Obtaining plant food from inedible plants (sugar from firewood)
2. Animal food without an animal link (wheat and soy steaks)
3. Food without animals and without plants - from yeast cells
4. Synthetic food without cells, without plants and without animals - with the help of energy from molecules (pp. 89-91).
Reducing each link increases the output ten times, if not more.
Remember that calves use only 8% of the alfalfa they eat for their weight gain? Balancing plant foods allows you to do without the animal link.
Veal without calves, lamb without rams!
You can balance any plant food. But soy protein is closest to meat, usually it is taken as a basis, balancing with methionine. Along the way, soybean oil is obtained. Tofu is a traditional Japanese food. The annual production of such products in Japan is 1 million tons, in the USA - about 500 thousand tons. Soy protein is added to sausages, sausages, minced meat, increasing their weight and not deteriorating quality.
Sufficiently pure soy or wheat protein can be spun as rayon is spun to form fibers. If you stick them together, give the necessary smell, taste, color, you get the most diverse food. So, in the catalog of one of the American firms it appears:
- Wheat cutlets.
- Fried wheat meat.
- Vegetarian meatballs made from wheat and soy.
- Sausage made from soy and corn.
- Soy beef.
- Soy ham.
- Wheat and soy sausages.
- Soy chicken.
- Turkey is a Sunday roast made from soy and wheat.
- Soy, wheat and yeast bacon.
- And another two dozen meat and vegetarian dishes.
By taste, these products are indistinguishable from natural food, at a price they are cheaper and are readily bought.
A completely new method for obtaining dietary fiber from vegetable proteins was also developed at our Institute of Organoelement Compounds by V. B. Tolstoguzov (pp. 96-97).
| Biomass doubling time | Average relative accumulation rate | |
| cows | 2 months-5 years | 1 |
| Pigs | 2-4 months | 10 |
| chickens | 1 month | 25 |
| Cereals, legumes | 7-30 days | 30 |
| Yeast, bacteria, unicellular algae | 1-6 hours | 18000 |
Nesmeyanov Alexander Nikolaevich (28. 08. (09. 09. 1899, Moscow - 12. 01. 1980, Moscow), Russian chemist, specialist in the field of chemistry of organoelement compounds, organizer of science and higher education, public figure, academician of the Academy Sciences (AN) USSR.
Born in the family of Nikolai Vasilievich Nesmeyanov, an employee of the Moscow City Council, who later became the director of the Bakhrushinsky shelter in Moscow.
In 1917 A.N. Nesmeyanov graduated with a silver medal from the Moscow private gymnasium P.N. Strakhov, and in 1922 - the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University (MGU) with a degree in physical chemistry and, at the suggestion of Academician N.D. Zelinsky was left at the university to prepare for a professorship.
Upon completion of graduate school, A.N. Nesmeyanov in 1924-1938. worked as an assistant, associate professor (since 1930), professor (since 1934) of the Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Moscow State University. At the same time, he was the head of the laboratory of organic chemistry at the Institute of Fertilizers and Insectofungicides (1930-1934), a full member of the Institute of Chemistry of Moscow State University (1935-1938).
Since 1938, the scientific activity of A.N. Nesmeyanov was associated with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR: in 1935-1938. he was the head of the laboratory of organometallic compounds of the Institute of Organic Chemistry (IOC) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and from 1939 to 1954 he was the director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry. N.D. Zelinsky Academy of Sciences of the USSR. At the same time in 1938-1941. A.N. Nesmeyanov was a professor and head of the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology.
In 1944 A.N. Nesmeyanov returned to Moscow State University, taking the post of head of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry, which he headed until 1979. In 1945-1948. He was the dean of the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University. At the same time in 1946-1948. He was Academician-Secretary of the Department of Chemical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1948 A.N. Nesmeyanov was appointed rector of Moscow State University and remained at the head of the university until 1951.
From 1951 to 1961 A.N. Nesmeyanov was the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1954, he organized and headed the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the USSR Academy of Sciences (INEOS; now INEOS named after A.N. Nesmeyanov RAS), remaining in the director's post until the end of his life. At the same time, A.N. Nesmeyanov was in charge of the laboratory of organometallic compounds.
In 1963-1975. A.N. Nesmeyanov served as Academician-Secretary of the Department of General and Technical Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
A.N. Nesmeyanov belongs to the largest chemists of the 20th century. The main directions of his scientific activity are the development of synthesis methods and the study of the properties of organometallic compounds of non-transition and transition metals; organic synthesis; theoretical organic chemistry; synthetic and artificial food.
A.N. Nesmeyanov discovered the reaction for obtaining organomercury compounds by the decomposition of double diazonium salts and metal halides, which was later extended to the synthesis of organic derivatives of many heavy metals (Nesmeyanov's diazo method); formulated the regularities of the relationship between the position of the metal in the periodic table and its ability to form organic compounds; proved that the products of the addition of salts of heavy metals to unsaturated compounds are covalent organometallic compounds; studied the geometric isomerism of ethylene organometallic compounds, discovering the rule of non-reversal of the stereochemical configuration in the processes of electrophilic and radical substitution at a carbon atom linked by a double carbon-carbon bond; developed fundamentally new ideas about the dual reactivity of organic compounds of a non-automeric nature; performed a number of studies in the field of chemistry of chlorovinyl ketones; developed the field of "sandwich" compounds of transition metals; carried out a large number of works on organophosphorus, organofluorine and organomagnesium compounds, metal carbonyls; discovered the phenomenon of metallotropy; laid the foundation for the creation of synthetic food products.
In 1934 A.N. Nesmeyanov, without defending a dissertation, bypassing the degree of candidate, was awarded the degree of Doctor of Chemical Sciences and at the same time the academic title of professor. In 1939 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (specialty "organic chemistry"), and in 1943 - Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Chemical Sciences in the same specialty.
Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov is an outstanding organizer of science. As rector of Moscow State University A.N. Nesmeyanov did a great job of preparing a project for a new complex of university buildings on the Lenin Hills, supervised the construction of a high-rise building of Moscow State University, equipping faculties, departments and laboratories of the country's main university with modern scientific, educational and laboratory equipment. As President of the USSR Academy of Sciences A.N. Nesmeyanov played a big role in organizing new institutes of the Academy, incl. All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), Institute of Biological Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. A.N. Nesmeyanov actively contributed to overcoming the consequences of the VASKhNIL session on biology, catastrophic for domestic genetics and science in general, advocated the development of research in the field of cybernetics, was an opponent of violating the integrity of the USSR Academy of Sciences, criticized the decisions of the Soviet authorities to transfer a number of institutes and laboratories of the USSR Academy of Sciences to sectoral ministries and departments. In 1961 A.N. Nesmeyanov "of his own free will" was forced to resign from the post of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov was a permanent member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1946. He headed many committees, councils and commissions at the USSR Academy of Sciences, including the Council for the Coordination of Scientific Activities of the Academies of Sciences of the Union Republics and Branches, the Editorial and Publishing Council, the Scientific Council on Organoelement Chemistry, the Committee promoting the construction of hydroelectric power plants, canals and irrigation systems; he was the editor-in-chief of the journal "Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR", chairman of the editorial board of the series "Materials for the biobibliography of scientists of the USSR", chairman of the editorial board of the series "Popular science literature".
In 1947-1950. A.N. Nesmeyanov was a deputy and deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, and in 1950-1962. - Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. From 1947 to 1961 A.N. Nesmeyanov was the chairman of the Committee on the Stalin (since 1956 - Lenin) Prizes in the field of science and technology under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov made a significant contribution to the formation of the peacekeeping movement in the USSR, to the development of international scientific, cultural and social relations. He stood at the origins of the Soviet Peace Committee (SKZM): in 1949 he was elected to the first composition of the Soviet Peace Committee and remained a member until the end of his life, in 1949 he was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the World Peace Congress, since 1950 was a member of the World Peace Council. A.N. Nesmeyanov participated in the 1st All-Union Peace Conference (1949), the session of the Standing Committee of the World Peace Congress in Sweden, which developed the Stockholm Appeal (1950), the II World Peace Congress (Warsaw, 1950), the session of the World Peace Council (Stockholm, 1954), World Peace Assembly (Helsinki, 1955). A.N. Nesmeyanov was personally involved in the preparation of the first conference of scientists on the atomic danger, held in 1957 in the Canadian town of Pugwash, as well as in organizing the Soviet Pugwash Committee under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1960, he took an active part in organizing and holding the 6th Pugwash Conference of Scientists "Disarmament and International Security" at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow, at which he delivered a speech.
A.N. Nesmeyanov was awarded the title twice Hero of Socialist Labor, he was awarded the Lenin Prize and the State Prize of the USSR. He was awarded the Big Gold Medal. M.V. Lomonosov Academy of Sciences of the USSR, gold medal to them. DI. Mendeleev Academy of Sciences of the USSR, was elected an honorary and foreign member of the Academies of Sciences of Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, India, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina ”, the European Society of Cultural Workers, the Chemical Society of Poland, the International Academy of Astronautics, the Indian Chemical Society. A.N. Nesmeyanov - honorary doctor of the University of Calcutta, Jena University. F. Schiller, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), the University of Bordeaux, the Iasi Polytechnic Institute, etc.
Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov was awarded seven Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, Cyril and Methodius I degree (Bulgaria), medals "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." and etc.
A.N. Nesmeyanov was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. His name was given to a street in Moscow, to the Institute of Organoelement Compounds (INEOS) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a research vessel. RAS established the Prize. A.N. Nesmeyanov, awarded for outstanding work in the field of chemistry of organoelement compounds; MSU has a scholarship. A.N. Nesmeyanov. A bust of A.N. Nesmeyanov, memorial plaques to the scientist are installed on the buildings of the INEOS RAS and the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University.
Lit .: Alexander Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov: a scientist and a person / comp. M.A. Nesmeyanov. - M.: Nauka, 1988. - 424 p.; Alexander Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov, 1899-1980 / comp. R.I. Goryacheva, V.Ya. Orlov. - Ed. 2nd, add. - M.: Nauka, 1992. - 272 p.; Nesmeyanov A.N. On the swing of the twentieth century / comp.-ed. M.A. Nesmeyanov. - M.: Nauka, 1999. - 308 p.; Nesmeyanova M.A. Light of Love: Memories of A.N. Nesmeyanov. - M.: Nauka, 1999. - 318 p.
Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Nesmeyanov Alexander Nikolaevich [b. 28.8(9.9).1899, Moscow], Soviet organic chemist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943; corresponding member 1939), public figure, Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1944. After graduating from Moscow State University (1922), he worked there (since 1935 professor, since 1944 head of the Department of Organic Chemistry, in 1944-48 dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, in 1948-51 rector, supervised the organization of the construction of Moscow State University on the Lenin Hills). At the same time he worked at the Institute of Fertilizers and Insectofungicides (1930-34), at the USSR Academy of Sciences: at the Institute of Organic Chemistry (since 1934, in 1939-54 director), Academician-Secretary of the Chemical Department (1946-51). President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1951-61), director of the Institute of Organoelement Compounds (since 1954), academician-secretary of the Department of General and Organic Chemistry (since 1961). In 1947-1961 Chairman of the Committee on Lenin and State Prizes in the field of science and technology. He took an active part in the work of the World Peace Council and the Soviet Peace Committee.
The main field of research is the chemistry of organometallic compounds. In 1929, he proposed the diazo method for the synthesis of organomercury compounds, which he and his collaborators later extended to the synthesis of organometallic compounds Sn, Pb, Tl, Sb, Bi (see Nesmeyanov reaction). N. studied various ways of mutual transformations of organometallic compounds, developed simple and convenient methods for the synthesis of organometallic compounds Mg, Zn, Cd, Al, Tl, Sn, Pb, Sb, Bi from organomercury compounds. He proved (together with R.Kh. Freidlina) that the products of the addition of salts of heavy metals to unsaturated compounds (the name N. "quasi-complex compounds") have the structure of covalent organometallic compounds. By researching metal derivatives of oxo-enol systems and alpha-mercuried oxo compounds, N. et al. clarified the complex issue of the relationship between the structure and dual reactivity of metal derivatives of tautomeric systems, developed the concept of conjugation of simple bonds, reactions with the transfer of a reaction center, etc .; found out (together with O.A. Reutov) the mechanism of electrophilic substitution at a saturated carbon atom. He was the first to synthesize chloronium, bromonium and triaryloxonium compounds; discovered the phenomenon of metallotropy. Since 1952 he has extensively developed the field of derivatives of ferrocene and other "sandwich" compounds of transition metals. On the initiative of N. and under his editorship (together with KA Kocheshkov) a series of monographs "Synthetic methods in the field of organometallic compounds" was published and a series of "Methods of organoelement chemistry" is being published. N. co-workers also performed a lot of work in the field of chemistry of chlorovinyl ketones (together with N.K. Kochetkov) and on the synthesis of aliphatic compounds using the telomerization reaction.
N. - a member of a number of foreign academies. Delegate of the 19th and 20th Congresses of the CPSU. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 3rd-5th convocations. USSR State Prize (1943), Lenin Prize (1966). He was awarded 6 orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, as well as medals.
NESMEYANOV, Alexander Nikolaevich
Alexander Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov - Soviet organic chemist. Born in Moscow. Graduated from Moscow University (1922). He worked there (since 1935 professor, since 1944 head of the department of organic chemistry, in 1944-1948 dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, in 1948-1951 rector of the university). At the same time he worked at the Research Institute of Fertilizers and Insectofungicides (1930-1934), at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1934, in 1939-1954 director); director of the Institute of Organoelement Compounds (since 1954). Academician-Secretary of the Chemical Department (1946-1951); President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1951-1961), Academician-Secretary of the Department of General and Organic Chemistry (since 1961). In 1947-1961. Chairman of the Committee on Lenin and State Prizes in the field of science and technology.
The main field of research is the chemistry of organometallic compounds. He discovered (1929) the reaction of obtaining organomercury compounds by decomposition of double diazonium salts and metal halides, later extended to the synthesis of organic derivatives of many heavy metals ( Nesmeyanov's diazomethod). Formulated (1945) regularities of the relationship between the position of the metal in the periodic table and its ability to form organic compounds. Proved (1940-1945) that the products of the addition of salts of heavy metals to unsaturated compounds are covalent organometallic (quasi-complex) compounds. Investigated (1945-1948) the geometric isomerism of ethylene organometallic compounds and at the same time discovered (1945) the rule of non-reversal of the stereochemical configuration in the processes of electrophilic and radical substitution at a carbon atom linked by a double carbon-carbon bond.
Together with M. I. Kabachnik, he developed (1955) fundamentally new ideas about the dual reactivity of organic compounds of a non-automeric nature. Together with R. Kh. Freidlina, he studied (1954-1960) radical telomerization and developed methods for the synthesis of α, ω-chloroalkanes, on the basis of which semi-products used in the production of fiber-forming polymers, plasticizers, and solvents were obtained. Carried out a number of studies in the field of chemistry of chlorovinyl ketones.
Under the leadership of A. N. Nesmeyanov, the field of "sandwich" compounds of transition metals, in particular derivatives of ferrocene, was developed in the USSR. Carried out a large number of works on organophosphorus, organofluorine and organomagnesium compounds, metal carbonyls. Discovered (1960) the phenomenon of metallotropy - the reversible transfer of an organomercury residue between oxy- and nitroso groups P-nitrosophenol. Laid (1962) the foundations of a new direction of research - the creation of synthetic food products. He established (1960-1970) ways of synthesis from the simplest and available substances (carbohydrates, nitro compounds, aldehydes) of amino acids and protein products, imitations of smells and taste of food products.
Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943; corresponding member 1939), member of a number of foreign academies. Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1969, 1979); awarded six orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. State Prize of the USSR (1943), Lenin Prize (1966), Gold Medal. M. V. Lomonosov (1962).
The name of A. N. Nesmeyanov was assigned (1980) to the Institute of Organoelement Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The Russian Academy of Sciences established the A.N. Nesmeyanov Prize, which has been awarded since 1995 for outstanding work in the field of chemistry of organoelement compounds.
