Mark Efimovich Vol'pin: The path to science

Abstract

Mark Efimovich Vol 'p in was born on May 23, 1923, in Simferopol into the family of doctors. The family often moved to new places, and Mark Efimovich learned Ukrainian and Turkmenian. From his early years, he showed interest in chemistry. In 1938, Vol 'p ins came in Moscow. At that time, a technical educational center for children was organized at the Polytechnic Museum; and young Vol 'p in enthusiastically started to study at the section of chemistry of this center. In 1939, he became a winner of the first Al l -Union Olympiad for young chemists and was admitted to the Department of Chemistry of the Moscow State University without entrance exams. He successfully completed the first year, but then his education was interrupted by the war. In 1941, M. E. Vol "pin vohmteered in the Army, but soon he was released because of health. During the three subsequent years he worked at the central chemical laboratory of the Ural tank construction plant in Miass (Chelyabinsk Region). These were hard and lean years; he had to work for 12--16 hours under conditions of almost no accident prevention. His lungs, injured during these years, told on him till the end of his life. At the Ural plant, M. E. Vol 'p in worked his way up from a laboratory assistant to deputy head of the laboratory, and introduced many new methods into analytical practice. The method for quick determination of tin in brot~zes developed by Mark Efimovich was presented at the All-Union competi t ion organized by the Ministry of Nonferrous Metallurgy, and was among the three best works. Only in 1945 did Vol 'p in return to the University. At that time, a s tudents ' scientific society was organized at the Department of Chemistry. A. F. Plat6, who was one of the guides of this society, became a teacher and a friend of Mark Efimovich for many years. A. F. Plat6 was the supervisor of M. E. Vo l ' p in ' s Ph.D. Thesis, entitled "Reactions of alkenes with ammonia in the presence of oxide catalysts; synthesis of acetonitrile" (1052). Ill 1953, M. E. Vol 'p in started to work in the Section of Theoretical Organic Chemistry at the AllUnion Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI). The Head of the Section, Dmitrii Nikolaevich Kursanov, highly appreciated Vol 'p in and invited him to carry out experimental research at his laboratory at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the USSR Academy of Sciences ( INEOS). In 1958, Vol 'p in joined the staff of this Institute. Owing to his work with D. N. Kursanov, who was a prominent scientist and a very cultured person of encyclopedic learning, ill a company of people enthusiastic about chemistry, Mark Efimovich quickly showed his talent, and very soon he obtained important scientific results. The subsequent scie~atific activity of Vol 'p in was entirely associated with the Institute of Organoelement Compounds. At this Institute, he accomplished his prominent works, which are recognized all over the world. The first studies of M. E. Vol 'p in were devoted to nonbenzenoid aromatic compounds. He had been interested in the problem of aromatici ty back in his student years. Vo l ' p in ' s fmldamental works dealing w i t h ' t h e chemistry of tropylium and cyclopropenylium cations are widely known.l He showed that the properties of the tropylium cation are determined, on the one hand, by the fact that it is a carbocation and, on the other:band, by the fact that it is an aromatic sys t em) As a carbenium ion, tropylium reacts with a wide range of nucleophiles, 3 whereas its aromatic nature accounts for its fairly high stability. Indeed, cycloheptatr ienylium cations are the most stable carbocations, able to exist in aqueous solutions. Since rotation of the seven-membered ring in the crystal precluded direct X-ray diffraction analysis o[" tropylium salts, 4 Vol 'p in proved the equivalence of all the C-C bonds in the tropylium cation using a ~4C isotope label. 5 Since the formation of an aromatic system is favorable, the C7H7 + cation is extremely easily generated upon cleavage of the C H , C--O, and C C