Nikolai Matveevich Kizhner (??????? ????????? ??????, 1867-1935) is immortalized in the name of the reaction he discovered, and that was discovered almost simultaneously by Ludwig Wolff (1857-1919). The Wolff-Kishner reduction, which is now just over a century old, is taught in practically every introductory organic chemistry course. Kizhner's career details are readily available, but they are also symptomatic of the fact that a famous chemist frequently becomes the captive of his fame, and this has certainly been the case with Kizhner.  There are relatively few details about his non-professional life, but, fortunately, there is biographical material available about him during his first academic appointment, as the founding Director of the Chemistry Laboratory at the Imperial Tomsk Technological Institute, in Tomsk, Siberia.  Here, during the first decade of his professional career, he passed through a remarkable series of events: he suffered the amputation of not one, but both legs below the knee, he organized teacher/student strikes against the government of Tsar Nicholas II, he was exiled from Tomsk for a year on the orders of the Governor-General of Western Siberia, and he discovered the reduction of ketones and aldehydes by base decomposition of their hydrazones. The early years of the career of this remarkable chemist will be discussed.

Disability, despotism, and deoxygenation�outlaw to Academy Member: Nikolai Matveevich Kizhner (1867-1935)

246th National Meeting (2013)

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