In the autumn of 1960, I successfully passed my entrance exams and entered graduate school at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Still, there was a moment during my exam on the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union when I made a crucial mistake. There was a question about the agenda of some Bolshevik congress, and the frail docent who was examining me went out of his way to ask me leading questions, so I couldn’t remember what the Bolsheviks were talking about. Offended by my lack of diligence, this dogmatist angrily gave me a “Three” (“C” mark). I feared that a low mark in such an “important” subject would prevent me from entering graduate school, and I would have to go back to my “boranes” for one more year. However, at the institute they were rather sympathetic about my mark. Probably by that time, many people understood that the exam in Marxism-Leninism was useless for a young chemist. Still, a year later, I had to take this exam again. Before that I had to attend some insanely boring seminars at the Academy of Social Sciences, which was located opposite the “Moskva” swimming pool (where the Temple of Christ the Savior has now been built).
The first two years of my studies in graduate school were not very successful. I was sent to work in Professor Vasily Sokolov’s laboratory for the analysis and separation of hydrocarbons. The laboratory consisted of two really cramped rooms. The elderly professor was quite friendly when he welcomed me, but he didn’t suggest a topic for my dissertation research or even a workplace. However, he promised that there would surely be something when the construction of a new building at the institute was completed. This was supposed to take place two years later, but the problem was that I had only three years to study.
All I could do was to doggedly peruse the scientific literature and to try to find a research topic myself. I had already identified the major direction I wanted my research to take. It had to be connected with chromatographic analysis. At that time, this was a relatively new area of science, and it was rapidly progressing in our country thanks to Aleksander Zhukhovitsky and Nisson Turkeltaub.
I had read almost all the available scientific literature in this field, and I was forming some ideas for my future work. However, I couldn’t do anything without instruments and a work area. My scientific supervisor wasn’t at all interested in these problems. At that time, he was carefully sowing the seeds of an idea among influential circles to create a new institute called the “All-Union Research Institute of Nuclear Geophysics and Geochemistry” (VNIIYaGG). Actually, such an institute was soon founded and Sokolov became the deputy director, as he had planned.
At the second All-Russian Scientific Conference on Chromatography, I got acquainted with Turkeltaub and told him my story. He invited me to his laboratory, which had moved to VNIIYaGG from a different institute, by that time. He suggested a topic for my dissertation and promised to introduce me to Zhukhovitsky. By then, I had just barely managed to scrape together my chromatograph and I was given a working area in the new building of the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis.
Soon I met with Zhukhovitsky and he agreed to supervise my work. Meeting and working with Zhukhovitsky and Turkeltaub made an indelible impression on me. They were truly pioneers in the science of chromatography. I remember with gratitude how generously they helped me and many other young scientists. They gave unstintingly of their time and energy.
Sadly, Turkeltaub died of a heart attack at the young age of 44. I think the reason for his early death was too many tragedies in his life. When he was a student in 1939, he was mobilized into the Polish Army and found himself on the front fighting against the Soviet Union. He was taken prisoner and ended up in a prisoner of war camp near Saratov.
During the Second World War, Sokolov’s laboratory for gas well surveys was evacuated to Saratov, and they continued working there, sending out field expeditions. Geochemists performed their gas well surveys, and the results were used to predict the locations of oil deposits. Their methods involved the analysis of hydrocarbon gases in the air samples taken from shallow boreholes.
Sokolov had suggested this method at the beginning of the 1930s, and it seemed promising, because it didn’t require expensive drilling to discover oil deposits. At that time, there were only two dilapidated oil drilling rigs in the country. The situation in this industry was so desperate that Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the Commissioner for Heavy Industry, even promised to present “his last pair of underwear” to someone who would suggest an alternative solution. Very soon, Sokolov became that person.
The people’s commissar kept his word, but he presented the inventor with a dacha near Moscow and a car, instead of his underwear. However, not a single oil deposit in the country was discovered with this method. The most important thing for the Soviet system was to come up with a new initiative, or to assume the obligations of the so-called “socialist labor competition”. Soon, Sokolov became a Doctor of Sciences and a professor without having to defend any dissertation. The professor dispatched his first scientific expeditions (at the expense of the state, of course) to his dacha in the Moscow suburbs.
One time, when the geochemists were working on a field trip not far from the camp of Polish prisoners of war, a woman who was working in the expedition noticed that one of the captives, a young handsome brunette, was closely observing their work. They soon got acquainted, as the guards didn’t pay much attention to the expedition workers. They had become accustomed to their presence near the camp. It turned out that the captive, Nisson Turkeltaub, was a former student of Krakov University. He knew very well what the scientists were doing there, because he had worked with similar instruments at his university.
Soon Turkeltaub started working with the expedition party, returning to his camp at night. His exceptional talent and diligence impressed the head of the expedition, who asked the higher authorities to release Turkeltaub to his personal custody. However strange as it may seem for that dreadful time, the authorities were lenient, and they met the expedition’s leader’s request halfway. Sokolov’s uncanny ability to find convincing and irresistible arguments played a role in this. He was excellent at that.
After the war, Turkeltaub graduated from Saratov University, and he quickly carved out a brilliant career in science, becoming the favorite scientist of all chromatography specialists in the USSR. His collaboration with the outstanding Russian scientist Zhukhovitsky played a great role in that.
Zhukhovitsky was a world famous scientist who made a serious contribution to the field of molecular structure, adsorption, diffusion, and chromatography. He was awarded a rare international prize for his achievements in the field of chromatography, a gold medal named after Mikhael Tsvet, the founder of chromatography. Zhukhovitsky became a Doctor of Chemical Sciences at the age of 27, which is a rare achievement for a chemist in any country. In his doctoral dissertation, he wasn’t afraid to challenge the authority of Michael Dubinin, the official “master” of this science in the USSR. He remarked that Dubinin’s so-called volumetric theory of adsorption was nothing but the repetition of the famous theory of Polyani. As a result, Zhukhovitsky had to defend his dissertation for a second time, before the Higher Attestation Committee. The official opponent of the young scientist was Dubinin himself. In spite of this, the committee had to approve the talented young man’s work.
But, Dubinin, who was an academician, a lieutenant general, and the head of the Department of Adsorption at the Voroshilov Academy of Chemical Defense, later got his revenge by preventing Zhukhovitsky from being elected a member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Also in 1948, during the campaign against “cosmopolitanism”, Dubinin published a “stinging” article in Proceedings of Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. about Zhukhovitsky, who was by then the First Deputy Director of the Karpov Physical Chemical Institute. Unfortunately, by that time Zhukhovitsky had already published his article on problems of molecular structure, in collaboration with the well-known English scientists Heitler and London in an English journal. At that time, this was considered to be a sign of “cosmopolitanism”, and Dubinin’s article was a direct appeal to the KGB to punish the author.