Nikolay Zelinsky

Zelinsky was born on 6 February 1861 in Tiraspol, then a district town in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire. After school in his home town he went to the Richelieu Gymnasium in Odesa and studied natural sciences at the University of Odesa, graduating in 1884. From 1885 to 1887 he did research in Leipzig and Göttingen.

From 1893 he was a professor at Moscow University. He studied how metals such as platinum and palladium speed up chemical reactions and in 1910 discovered catalytic dehydrogenation. In 1915, in the middle of the First World War, he and the engineer Kummant developed a gas mask with activated charcoal, regarded as the first effective filter mask of its kind. In 1918 and 1919 he worked out a method of obtaining petrol by cracking crude oil. From 1935 he helped build up the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences, which has borne his name since 1953. He died in Moscow that year, aged 92; his honours included the title Hero of Socialist Labour (1945).

The link with Moldova

Tiraspol has not forgotten him. The house where he spent his childhood has been turned into a memorial museum. School No. 6, where he was a pupil, has a memorial plaque and a monument, and a street in the Kirovsky district bears his name.

Where you will find him

To see these places you need to travel to Transnistria, a breakaway region with its own administration, its own currency and a checkpoint on the road from Chișinău. Before you set off, check the current travel advice of the Belgian FPS Foreign Affairs.