Nikolay Semyonov

Semyonov was born in Saratov in April 1896, the son of Yelena Dmitrieva and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semyonov. He graduated from the department of physics of Petrograd University (1913–1917), where he was a student of Abram Fyodorovich Ioffe. After graduating from Saint Petersburg State University, Semyonov worked as an assistant and lecturer in Tomsk at the Tomsk University Institute of Technology, where he published his first research paper in 1916. In 1918, he moved to Samara, where he was enlisted into Kolchak's White Army in 1919 during the Russian Civil War, although he obtained a teaching deferment and managed to avoid service. In December of that same year, he was pressed into the radio service of the Red Army. After his discharge in the winter of 1920, Semyonov obtained work at universities in Perm and Tomsk. After the war, Semyonov returned to Petrograd and took charge of the electron phenomena laboratory of the Petrograd Physico-Technical Institute, continuing to occasionally travel back to Tomsk as well as at times meeting with officials from Moscow. He also became the vice-director of the institute.

In 1921, he married philologist Maria Boreishe-Liverovsky (student of Zhirmunsky). She died two years later. On September 15, 1924, Nikolay married Maria's niece, Natalia Nikolayevna Burtseva. They had two children, son Yuri and daughter Lyudmila.

During that difficult time, Semyonov, together with Pyotr Kapitsa, discovered a way to measure the magnetic field of an atomic nucleus (1922). Later the experimental setup was improved by Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach and became known as Stern–Gerlach experiment.

In 1925, Semyonov, together with Yakov Frenkel, studied kinetics of condensation and adsorption of vapors. In 1927, he studied ionisation in gases and published an important book, Chemistry of the Electron. In 1928, he, together with Vladimir Fock, created a theory of thermal disruptive discharge of dielectrics.

In 1927, Semyonov studied the ionization of gases, the chemistry of the electron. In 1928, he created the theory of the broken discharge of dielectrics with Vladimir Fock.

He lectured at the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute and was appointed Professor in 1928. In 1931, he organized the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences (which moved to Chernogolovka in 1943) and became its first director. In 1932, he became a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

The ideas of Semyonov have been applied in the science of reaction and production of polymerization reactions. His ideas are also applied in catalysis studies in biological systems.

Semyonov married Natalya Nikolayevna Semyonov and together they both have a son and a daughter. Semyonov died on September 25, 1986, in Moscow, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.