Background
Nikolay Nikolayevich Beketov was born on January 13, 1827, in Alferevka village, Penzensky district, Russia.
Beketov on a 2010 stamp of Ukraine.
Kazan (Volga region) Federal University, 18 Ulitsa Kremlevskaya, Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia
In 1849, Beketov graduated from Kazan University.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Beketov, Russian physical chemist and metallurgist.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Beketov, Russian physical chemist and metallurgist.
Никола́й Никола́евич Беке́тов
chemist metallurgist scientist
Nikolay Nikolayevich Beketov was born on January 13, 1827, in Alferevka village, Penzensky district, Russia.
In 1849, Beketov graduated from Kazan University and worked with Nikolay Zinin. In 1865, he defended his Doctor of Philosophy thesis on "Research into the phenomenon of displacement of one element by another."
After the graduation from Kazan University in 1849, Beketov then worked in Zinin’s laboratory at the Academy of Medicine and Surgery in St. Petersburg. In 1855 he became a junior scientific assistant at Kharkiv University, and from 1859 to 1886 he was a professor of chemistry. In 1864 Beketov organized the department of chemistry and physics at Kharkiv, with laboratory work in physical chemistry, and taught a course in physical chemistry.
Under Zinin’s influence, Beketov began his scientific activity with work in organic chemistry, studying esterification reactions. In his master’s thesis (1853) he further developed the concepts of basicity and affinity, which had been worked out by C. F. Gerhardt and his followers. In Beketov’s work, one can find the sources of the study of “chemical value,” which was later developed by the Butlerov school.
Beketov’s later interests were physical and inorganic chemistry. As a result of his studies of the liberation of certain metals by hydrogen and by other metals, Beketov established an activity series of metals, demonstrating that the process of reduction is associated with the formation of galvanic pairs. In order to promote the concentration of the reagent, Beketov subjected the hydrogen to pressures of 100 atmospheres and higher. “This action of hydrogen,” he wrote, “depends on the gas pressure and the concentration of the metal (in acids), or in other words, depends on the chemical mass of the reducing body.” In this work, he closely approached the law of mass action and also studied the reversibility of the reaction.
The results of all these investigations were stated in his doctoral dissertation (1865).
Beketov later discovered and substantiated the theoretical possibility that metals could be reduced from their oxides by using aluminum, thus opening the way to the creation of the method of alumino-thermal reduction. His constant interest in the theory of chemical affinity led to a large series of then no-chemical researches, begun in Kharkiv and continued in St. Petersburg.
Beketov was elected a member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1886. The scientist was also a member and the president of the Russian Society of Physical Chemistry.