Born 15 Apr 1896; died 25 Sep 1986 at age 90.

#Russian physical #chemist who shared the 1956 #NobelPrize for Chemistry with Sir Cyril Hinshelwood for “their researches into the mechanism of #chemical #reactions.”

He was the first #Soviet scientist to receive a Nobel Prize.

In 1926, with his coworkers, Semyonov first discovered #branched-chain reactions in the #oxidation of #phosphorus. Whereas his intent for the investigation began as a study of the light output of that reaction, he was surprised to find there is a critical pressure of oxygen gas below which no activity would take place. The theoretical explanations he developed for how a process can initiate by a chain mechanism are also applicable in a wide range of chemical reactions, including oxidation, #cracking, #halogenation, #polymerization and #explosions. The #chain mechanism creates an avalanche of #interactions.

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