Nikolskii, Boris
Nikol’skii, Boris Petrovich
Born Oct. 1 (14), 1900, in Menzelinsk, present-day Tatar ASSR. Soviet physical chemist and radiochemist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968; corresponding member, 1953). Hero of Socialist Labor (1970).
Nikol’skii has worked at Leningrad University since his graduation in 1925 (he became a professor in 1939); since 1946 he has also been a laboratory head at the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute. He studied the processes of ion exchange between aqueous solutions and various solid systems (soil, ion-exchange resins, and so on) and formulated a theory of such processes that is currently used in ion-exchange chromatography. Nikol’skii also proposed the ion-exchange theory of glass electrodes. He has been awarded the Lenin Prize (1961), the State Prize of the USSR (1949 and 1973), two Orders of Lenin, and several medals.