Chemistry News

July 25th – Sergey Vasilyevich Lebedev

Russian chemist Sergey Vasilyevich Lebedev was born on this day in 1874.

He developed a method for industrial production of synthetic rubber. In 1910, while researching processes by which small molecules combine to form large ones. Lebedev made an elastic rubber by polymerizing butadiene (CH2CH-CHCH2), which he obtained from ethyl alcohol. Production of polybutadiene in the Soviet Union using Lebedev’s process was begun in 1932-33, using potatoes and limestone as raw materials. By 1940 the Soviet Union had the largest synthetic rubber industry in the world, producing more than 50,000 tons per year. During WW II his process of obtaining butadiene from ethyl alcohol was also used by the German rubber industry.

 

14650login-checkJuly 25th – Sergey Vasilyevich Lebedev
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