Nikolai Kizhner

[in English sources, N. M. Kishner]. Born Nov. 27 (Dec. 9), 1867, in Moscow; died there Nov. 28, 1935. Soviet organic chemist. Honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1934; corresponding member, 1929).

Kizhner graduated from Moscow University in 1890. He was a student of V. F. Luginin and V. V. Markovnikov. From 1901 to 1913 he was a professor at the Tomsk Institute of Technology, which he left because of a dispute with the reactionary Ministry of Public Education. From 1914 to 1917 he taught at the Shaniavskii People’s University in Moscow. Beginning in 1918 he was scientific director of the Research Institute of the Aniltrest (Aniline Trust) in Moscow.

Kizhner obtained hexahydrobenzene from benzene; was the first (1895) to characterize in detail the amines and hydrazines of the polymethylene series; described a method of obtaining substituted hydrazines; discovered (1911) the reaction of the catalytic decomposition of hydrazones, which became a widespread method of hydrocarbon synthesis (Kizhner-Wolff reaction); and discovered (1912) a means of synthesizing hydrocarbons of the cyclopropane series and, in particular, of carane (Kizhner reaction). The methods of obtaining organic dyes developed by Kizhner (1918–35) greatly promoted the development of the Soviet aniline-dye industry. Kizhner’s works were honored by the Russian Physicochemical Society by two A. M. Butlerov prizes.