CHEMISTS from Russia

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Russian Chemists of all time. This list of famous Russian Chemists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Russian Chemists.

1. Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 - 1907)

With an HPI of 83.83, Dmitri Mendeleev is the most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 149 different languages on wikipedia.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (sometimes romanized as Mendeleyev, Mendeleiev, or Mendeleef; English: MEN-dəl-AY-əf; Russian: Дмитрий Иванович Менделеев, romanized: Dmitriy Ivanovich Mendeleyev, IPA: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ mʲɪnʲdʲɪˈlʲejɪf] ; 8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1834 – 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is best known for formulating the Periodic Law and creating a version of the periodic table of elements. He used the Periodic Law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known elements, such as the valence and atomic weight of uranium, but also to predict the properties of three elements that were yet to be discovered (germanium, gallium and scandium).

2. Paul Karrer (1889 - 1971)

With an HPI of 71.98, Paul Karrer is the 2nd most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 64 different languages.

Paul Karrer (21 April 1889 – 18 June 1971) was a Swiss organic chemist best known for his research on vitamins. He and Norman Haworth won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1937.

3. Otto Wallach (1847 - 1931)

With an HPI of 71.29, Otto Wallach is the 3rd most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 71 different languages.

Otto Wallach (German pronunciation: [ˈɔto ˈvalax] ; 27 March 1847 – 26 February 1931) was a German chemist and recipient of the 1910 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on alicyclic compounds.

4. Ilya Prigogine (1917 - 2003)

With an HPI of 70.23, Ilya Prigogine is the 4th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 67 different languages.

Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; Russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин; 25 January [O.S. 12 January] 1917 – 28 May 2003) was a Belgian physical chemist of Russian-Jewish origin, noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. Prigogine's work most notably earned him the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as well as the Francqui Prize in 1955 and the Rumford Medal in 1976.

5. Valery Legasov (1936 - 1988)

With an HPI of 68.58, Valery Legasov is the 5th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 38 different languages.

Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: Валерий Алексеевич Легасов; 1 September 1936 – 27 April 1988) was a Soviet inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He is primarily known for his efforts to contain the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Legasov also presented the findings of an investigation to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the United Nations Office at Vienna, detailing the actions and circumstances that led to the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

6. Fritz Albert Lipmann (1899 - 1986)

With an HPI of 64.77, Fritz Albert Lipmann is the 6th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Fritz Albert Lipmann (German pronunciation: [fʁɪts ˈʔalbɛʁt ˈlɪpman] ; June 12, 1899 – July 24, 1986) was a German-American biochemist and a co-discoverer in 1945 of coenzyme A. For this, together with other research on coenzyme A, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953 (shared with Hans Adolf Krebs).

7. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1863 - 1944)

With an HPI of 63.73, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky is the 7th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 53 different languages.

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Прокудин-Горский, IPA: [sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ prɐˈkudʲɪn ˈɡorskʲɪj] ; August 30 [O.S. August 18] 1863 – September 27, 1944) was a Russian chemist and photographer. He is best known for his pioneering work in colour photography and his effort to document early 20th-century Russia. Using a railway-car darkroom provided by Emperor Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky travelled the Russian Empire from around 1909 to 1915 using his three-image colour photography to record its many aspects. While some of his negatives were lost, the majority ended up in the US Library of Congress after his death. Starting in 2000, the negatives were digitised and the colour triples for each subject digitally combined to produce hundreds of high-quality colour images of Russia and its neighbours from over a century ago.

8. Nikolay Semyonov (1896 - 1986)

With an HPI of 61.01, Nikolay Semyonov is the 8th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 63 different languages.

Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov , sometimes Semenov, Semionov or Semenoff (Russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Семёнов; 15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1896 – 25 September 1986) was a Soviet physicist and chemist. Semyonov was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the mechanism of chemical transformation.

9. Vladimir Markovnikov (1838 - 1904)

With an HPI of 59.17, Vladimir Markovnikov is the 9th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Vladimir Vasilyevich Markovnikov, also Markownikoff (Russian: Влади́мир Васи́льевич Марко́вников; 25 December [O.S. 13 December] 1837 – 11 February 1904) was a Russian chemist, best known for having developed the Markovnikov's rule, that describes addition reactions of hydrogen halides and alkenes.

10. Alexander Butlerov (1828 - 1886)

With an HPI of 58.50, Alexander Butlerov is the 10th most famous Russian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Alexander Mikhaylovich Butlerov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Бу́тлеров; 15 September 1828 – 17 August 1886) was a Russian chemist, one of the principal creators of the theory of chemical structure (1857–1861), the first to incorporate double bonds into structural formulas, the discoverer of hexamine (1859), the discoverer of formaldehyde (1859) and the discoverer of the formose reaction (1861). He first proposed the idea of possible tetrahedral arrangement of valence bonds in carbon compounds in 1862. Butlerov was born into a landowning family. The crater Butlerov on the Moon is named after him.