Ivan Knunyants was a Soviet chemist of Armenian origin, academic of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, a Major General and engineer, who significantly contributed to the advancement of Soviet chemistry. He made more than 200 inventions, many of which used in the Soviet industry.
Background
Ivan Knunyants was born on May 22, 1906 in Shusha (now Nagorno-Karabakh) in the Armenian family of an oil engineer, a member of the revolutionary movement in Russia. He spent his youth in Grozny, where his father managed the oil fields.
From birth, he was surrounded by ardent Bolsheviks — his father Ludwig Mirzajanovich Knunyants, his uncles Bogdan Mirzajanovich and Tigran Mirzajdanovich Knunyants, and his aunt Faro Minaevna Knunyants, who participated in three revolutions and, together with her brothers, actively advocated the overthrow of the autocracy.
Ivan Ludvigovich's mother — Roza Karlovna Babikova-Knunyants — was a modest, hardworking and caring woman. For about 25 years, she worked in a Montenegrin hospital as a doctor.
Education
In his youth, Ivan Knunyants worked as a locksmith in the oil fields and also attended school. He worked actively in the Komsomol and communicated with the working youth, which brought up in him a sense of purpose, hard work and integrity. He studied hard, was inquisitive and always helped his friends. In 1923, he successfully completed his studies at the school. After that, he entered the Chemistry department of the Moscow Higher Technical School. The head of the Department of Organic Chemistry at that time was Professor (later academician) A. E. Chichibabin, who met Knunyants at the entrance exams and had a great influence on him. Ivan Knunyants graduated from Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School (MVTU) in 1928. In 1937, he defended his doctoral dissertation.
Career
Since 1929, he worked as a teacher at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. In 1937, he defended his doctoral dissertation, and in 1939 became a Doctor of Chemical Sciences. In 1949 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1953-a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1932, in the Red Army, on teaching work in the VAKHZ named after K. E. Voroshilov, since 1938-head of the department. At the same time he headed the laboratory INASAN. Editor-in-Chief of the "Journal of the All-Union Chemical Society named after D. I. Mendeleev".
Politics
Member, Communist Party, since 1941.
