Russian Scientists' Contribution to the World Science - Essay Example

Russian Scientists Introduction: Russians have always been found to have contributed greatly to the world of innovations and sciences. Few of the gadgets and the tools which we use in out day to day life are from the scientist who have innovated things throughout their lifetimes. Some of the remarkable contributors are Dmitri Mendeleev, who invented the Periodic Table of Elements. Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev, who invented the synthetic rubber (polybutadiene). Aleksandr Loran who invented the fire fighting foam and foam extinguisher. Economist and Noble prize winner Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich, founder of linear programming. Nikolai Basov, who invented laser. Now, in this assignment let us discuss in detail the hurdles faced by them through the process of innovations and life history. Dmitri Mendedleev: One of the great scientists of Russia is the Dmitri Mendelev, survived from 1834 to 1907 and has contributed the precious Periodic Table of Elements. The story began when the atomic weights of elements were derived wrongly. As a result incorrect compounds were found to be formed. So there resulted a serious confusion in determining the characteristics of elements and their atomic weights (Allaby & Gjertsen, 2002). It was stated that Mendeleev derived the Periodic table in his dreams. Mendeleev had the vision of the Periodic table in his mind but unable to put them in to table. He worked continuously for three days to create the table. Ultimately he slept in his table and had a dream of the arranging the 63 elements in the Periodic Table of Elements. Then he wake up from the dream and derived the table that he dreamt. It was perfectly correct with only few corrections made in it. It took nearly 20 years to construct this precious table and his contribution helped greatly to learn the characteristics and property of the elements. Later he discovered Gallium, Scandium and Germanium. He worked as a professor at the St. University of Petersburg from 1868 to 1890. His other studies and contributions are Nature of solutions Expansion of liquids 40° vodka formula 30 components formula derived in 5 rows. This was so simple and precise that his findings exceeded all the works of his predecessors. The derivation of 40° vodka formula was really an interesting story. It was the time world over running researches on weight analysis on alcoholic solutions. Mendeleev received the accurate results by missing the alcohol with water based on weights while the whole other world used to mix by volumes. Then he formulated as the precise content of spirit in vodka to be 40°. Upon reciprocal dilution the largest compression a mixture can be made. That is 45.88% of anhydrous spirit can be mixed with 54.12% of water. To explain this exactly 1 liter of 40° vodka weights 951 grams exactly (Allaby & Gjertsen, 2002). Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev: Lebedev was born in 1834 in Lubin. He completed his graduation at St. Petersburg University. After his graduation he moved from university to university in charge of the work and finally settled down at the Petersburg Margarine Factory (Encyclopedia Britannica Inc, 2002). His main works are devoted to the invention of the polymerization of the hydrocarbons of ‘diene’ type. He was the first to produce the polybutadiene synthetic rubber. This synthetic rubber replaced the natural rubber and was produced during World War I as there was a shortage of natural rubber. His wrote a book named as ‘Research in polymerization of by-ethylene hydrocarbons’ in 1913, which became the basics guide for studies on synthetic rubber. He also introduced the modern methods which lead to the manufacture of the butyl synthetic rubber and poly iso-butylene with the help of his studies on polymerization of ethylene monomers. The access of reliable sources to natural rubber was difficult to Russians. Hence the mass production of the synthetic rubber was essential and this was launched in 1932. In 1940, they produced more than 50,000 tons per year. Later the process of obtaining butadiene rubber from ethyl alcohol was used by rubber industries of Germany also. His important other contributions include the Study of kinetics of hydrogenation of ethylene hydrocarbons and Developed the motor oils of synthetic type which could be used in aircraft engines Aleksandr Loran: Aleksandr Loran was born in Kishinyov in 1849. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute from Saint Petersburg and worked as a teacher in Baku after studied chemistry from Paris. Baku is the main place of oil industries at that time. He is impressed with the terrible fire that happened out of the oil and start searching for a substance that fights oil fire. Then he was successful in inventing a fire extinguisher made of foams. Later he patented the invention and started a company which produces foam extinguishers under the name of ‘Eurica’ (en.domotica, 2011). Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich: Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich is a mathematician cum economist of 1912 – 1986. He worked for the government of soviet Russia and his key task was to optimize the production of a ply wood industry. He ended up with a technique which is now called as linear programming. He is known for the theoretical and development of the technique in optimal allocation of the resources (Britannica, 2011). He was awarded noble prize for his work on linear programming in the discipline of Economics in 1975. His other findings are Analysis of Functions could be used for iterative methods analysis. Theory on approximations and operators. Nikolai Basov: The pioneering work of Nikolai Basov has led to the discovery of Laser. Nikolai Basov is a physicist survived from 1922 to 2001. His area of research was in the field of quantum electronics which is the basics of the Laser technology. He shared the noble prize with Alexander Prokhorov and Charles Townes in the discipline of physics in 1964. He is graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physical Engineers. Later he moved to Lebedev Physical Institute to work under the supervision of Prokhorov. They both started to search for a technique to amplify the signals of microwave in spectroscopic experiments. Then the idea of using a gas filled cavity as the reflector in order to intensify the beam strike which helped them to build a microwave of low range. Further refined researches led them to the production of laser. Townes and Basov at the same time breakthrough the same and shared the Noble prizes (Lundqvist, 1998). Sergey Brin: Sergey Brin is the founder of the internet search engine Google, which changed the whole world of seeking information. He is an Industrialist who own a personal wealth of around $19.8billion earned through his online advertisements in Google. He acquired a Ph.D in the discipline of computer sciences. He is a Russian American who immigrated to US at the age of six and had been to Russia as a trip in the schools. He feels lucky for having brought up in US. His father was a mathematical professor at the University of Maryland and hence he had his education at the University of Maryland. The Brin and his family were compelled to immigrate to US and had very hard times in Russia. Brin was focusing on the development of data mining systems where the concept of citations of the research papers being interfered with the other research papers. Having learnt the importance of this he presented a paper on the anatomy of the hyper textual web search engine (Stewart, 2007). Then along with Larry page filled the dormitory room cheap computers and made all the researches. Then suspended their PhD and concentrated in developing search engines. They raised funds with their relatives and families and friends and joined hand in hand with Sun Microsystems and installed the Google Inc., for a payment of $100, 000. They do not even have an account to keep the money safe at that time. The Forbes Magazine described Brin and Larry page as the most powerful people in the world. Brin is married to Anne who is a biotechnology analyst and together they are now producing Human Genome Project. Brin is found to have the mutations of the LRRK2 which shows that there is possibility of having a Parkinson Diseases. Brin’s mother is found to have Parkinson’s Diseases. Brin’s considers the genetics as a database (Stewart, 2007). Conclusions: Thus the discovery and the inventions of few of the Great Russian scientist have been discussed. Few scientists took their whole of the lifetime to invent or discover where as some of them took years to accomplish. All the hard work and the innovations have always used to favor the mankind. All the gadgets and tools which we used today are the fruit of the long researches that were made years ago. References Allaby, M. & Gjertsen, D. (2002). Makers of science, Volume 1. UK: Oxford University Press. Encyclopedia Britannica (2002). Encyclopedia Britannica. Volume 7. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica (2011). Leonid Vitalyevich Kantorovich. [Online]. Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/311550/Leonid-Vitalyevich-Kantorovich Accessed on 5th May 2011. en.domotica (2011). Alexander Loran. Available at: http://en.domotica.net/Aleksandr_Loran Accessed on 4 May, 2011. Lundqvist, S. (1998). Nobel Lectures. Physics, 1963-1970. Singapore: World Scientific. Stewart, G.B. (2007). Larry Page and Sergey Brin: The Google Guys. Gale. Read More