Vitalii Khlopin

Born Jan. 14 (26), 1890, in Perm’; died July 10, 1950, in Leningrad. Soviet chemist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939; corresponding member, 1933). Hero of Socialist Labor (1949). Son of G. V. Khlopin.

Khlopin graduated from the University of Göttingen in 1911 and from St. Petersburg University in 1912. From 1915 to 1921 he worked at the Radiological Laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Beginning in 1922, he worked at the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, serving as the institute’s director from 1939 to 1950. At the same time, from 1924, he was on the faculty at Leningrad State University, where he was a professor from 1934 to 1937 and where he taught the first course in the USSR on the chemistry of radioactive elements and on radioactivity. Khlopin also directed the construction of the first radium plant in Russia, where, with I. Ia. Bashilov, he obtained the first Soviet radium preparations.

Khlopin’s major works were devoted to radiochemistry. Khlopin established the law of the distribution of microcomponents between the solid and liquid phases, now known as Khlopin’s law. He proposed a method for determining the composition of unstable chemical compounds by studying conditions of cocrystallization. He studied the migration of radioactive elements in the earth’s crust and developed a method for determining the absolute age of rocks on the basis of radioactive data. Khlopin discovered and studied radium-containing waters in nature. He also studied the distribution of helium and argon in natural gases and the distribution of boron in natural waters. Khlopin created a scientific school of radiochemistry.

Khlopin received the State Prize of the USSR in 1943, 1946, and 1949. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and several medals.