Victor Kondratiev

The First Russian President of IUPAC: Victor Kondratiev

by Elena Zaitseva-Baum

Victor Nikolaevitch Kondratiev was elected a member of the Bureau, the Executive Committee and the Editorial Board of IUPAC at the beginning of the XXI st International Conference in Montreal, in August of 1961. He succeeded Boris A. Kazanski (1891-1973) who had resigned. At this time the Academy of Science of USSR was the national adhering body in IUPAC since 1930.

As a full member of the USSR Academy of Science (1953) Kondratiev was indeed a world-renowned scientist at that time. He began his scientific work in Petrograd (known as Leningrad since 1924) in the Physical-Technical Radiological Institute where he designed the first spectrometer for research purposes in the USSR. In 1925 he was trained by James Franck at the Physical Institute of the University of Gottingen where he mastered the spectroscopic methods and studied photochemical reactions. Later, Kondratiev’s main scientific activity was associated with the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Academy of Science of USSR (Institut khimicheskoĭ fiziki, Leningrad), located in Moscow after 1943 and established by the Nobel laureate Nikolaï N. Semenov (1896-1986) in 1931. As a corresponding member of Academy of Science of USSR (1943), Kondratiev held the position of the deputy director of this Institute beginning in 1948. His most famous works were devoted to the investigation of elementary processes during chemical transformations in the gaseous phase. Kondratiev’s career and his international contacts explain why the scientist was immediately elected at the Bureau. He was also involved in the Commission on Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy (CMSS) as associate member from 1963 on.

In 1965, owing to Kondratiev’s efforts, the 20th IUPAC Congress was held in the USSR (Moscow, 12-18 July) for the first time. Under his supervision as chairman of the Soviet Organizing Committee, 570 proposals were selected out of the 760 submitted. Kondratiev who was elected IUPAC vice-president some days before this congress at the IUPAC general assembly in Paris (2-9 July), was elected president in 1967 for a two year term. The scientist also took part in founding CODATA (1966) as an interdisciplinary Committee of ICSU. Notably, he participated in a special Task Group of this Committee, established in 1969, and his most important initiative was the foundation of the special kinetic section within the Task Group [1].

Postage stamp issued by the USSR on 15 June 1965 to publicize the 20th IUPAC Congress, held in Moscow a month later (12–18 July). See Daniel Rabinovich, Chem Int Jan-Feb 2009, 29(1), p. 3; https://doi. org/10.1515/ci.2007.29.1.3

As president of the IUPAC, Kondratiev brought up the question about the composition of Division Committees and Commissions (memoranda 1967 and 1969). The Memorandum written in 1967 contained two main proposals: “(1) that each Commission of a Division should be represented in the Division committee itself and (2) that National Bodies should be invited to send representatives to meetings of Commissions” [2]. These proposals, approved, would be applied at the next elections as a mean of “strengthening the responsibility of Presidents and Committees of IUPAC Divisions for the activities of their Commissions and Divisions” [3]. Among others the need to introduce procedure rules or regulation for the Divisions activities was felt, by analogy with the procedures existing in the Analytical Division.

Before leaving IUPAC, Kondratiev considered—as his last task—the necessity to include representatives of the Soviet chemical industry as participants of IUPAC. To that aim, he raised the issue in the late 1960s before the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of science about the creation of a special organization: the National Committee which would include representatives of the domestic chemical industry along with representatives of the Academy of Science and Ministry of Higher Education. Such an organization was founded in the USSR by the beginning of the 1970s. Kondratiev headed it until his withdrawal from IUPAC in 1971.

References

1. Russian Academy of Science (RAS) Archives. Fund 411 (Personnel Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences). Schedule 3. File 389 (Kondratiev’s personal file). (Archives in Russian, quotes in this article translated by the author)

2. Minutes of IUPAC Council Meeting, 29 August 1967 in IUPAC Comptes rendus XXIV Conference, Prague, 4-10 September 1967, minute 18, p.107.

3. RAS Archives. Fund 579 (Foreign Relations Main Administration of the USSR Academy of Sciences). Schedule 4. File 848 (Materials on the participation of Soviet scientists in the activities of IUPAC). (Archives in Russian, quotes in this article translated by the author)

Dr. Elena Zaitseva(Baum), Senior Research Fellow and lecturer of history of chemistry at Moscow University, is the coauthor of several monographs on Russian scientists (e.g., Wladimir Fedorovich Louginine, Moscow, 2012) and a number of textbooks ( e.g., Chemical discoveries and theories of the first half of the XIX century. The historical excursus. Baku, 2018). She is Russian representative in the EuCheMS Working Party on History of Chemistry.

Cite: Zaitseva-Baum, E. (2019). The First Russian President of IUPAC: Victor Kondratiev, Chemistry International, 41(3), 33-34; https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2019-0311