At various times in its history, Russia has been a military superpower, an economic superpower, and a political superpower, but the general impression has been that when it comes to higher education, Russia always lagged behind her peers.  This impression is not necessarily wrong, and coupled with the fact that Russia uses the Cyrillic, rather than the Roman alphabet, may have led many in the west to be unaware of Russian contributions to chemistry�despite the fact that the Periodic Table of the elements was the work of a Russian!  In this paper, a brief overview of the development of higher education in Russia will be given, with the development of organic chemistry in Russia providing the focus.  One should expect to find that many of the reactions and named rules of introductiry courses in organic chemistry are of Russian, rather than German origin.

Brief history of organic chemistry in Russia: Early Russian organic chemists and their legacy

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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