Pyotr Petrovich of Weimarn

Pyotr Petrovich of Weimarn , Peter von Weimarn, von Weymarn, ( Russian Петр Петрович фон Веймарн ; born July 5 ^{. Jul} / 17th July  1879 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † 2. June 1935 in Shanghai ) was a Russian chemist and one of the founders of colloid chemistry .

Von Weimarn came from a German-Baltic noble family ( Weymarn ). From 1901 he studied at the Mining Institute in Saint Petersburg. During his studies as a mining engineer, he experimented in the chemical laboratory of the institute with various, arbitrarily selected substances (salts, elements, etc.), which he examined for their "colloidal" properties by varying the physical-chemical conditions.

In May 1908 he defended his doctoral thesis immediately after completing his studies with distinction. In the same year he was appointed adjunct professor for physical chemistry. In 1910 he completed his habilitation at the University of Saint Petersburg , where he became a private lecturer. In 1911 the Berginstitut appointed him associate professor and appointed him head of the laboratory for physical chemistry. From 1914 he also worked at the institute as an inspector for student affairs. In 1915 he was appointed full professor.

In the spring of 1915 he was commissioned by the Tsar's Ministry of Trade and Industry to manage the construction and organization of a mining institute in Yekaterinburg . The Ural Mountain Institute opened in October 1917 under Von Weimarn's rectorate. In view of the reconquest of the city by the Red Army, part of the institute evacuated to Vladivostok in July 1919 and Von Weimarn was elected prorector of the Polytechnic Institute there and was temporarily dean of the mining department. In May 1920 he was elected rector. In 1921 he came to Japan for lectures at the universities of Tokyo, Sendai and Kyoto. The lectures held there appeared as the generality of the colloid state as a book in German. In 1922 he worked in the physical chemistry laboratory at Kyoto University. In 1923 he moved to Osaka as the founder and head of the dispersoidological laboratory of the Imperial Technical Testing and Research Institute, where he remained active until 1930. In 1932 he set up his own laboratory in Kobe .

In the same year, the Russian Chemical Society awarded him the Nikolaj N. Beketov Prize for the principle of the generality of the colloidal and crystalloid state, established by Von Weimarn in 1906. Three more awards followed in the following years: from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute (1908), the Moscow University and the Academy of Sciences (1912).

The von Weimarn rule about the dependence of the particle size of a precipitate on the concentration states that the size of the particles in the precipitate is greatest at medium concentrations. Colloidal solutions can arise from highly diluted or highly concentrated solutions, but not in the area in between.

In his work Von Weimarn showed the wide spread of the possibility of the colloidal state. He examined the nucleation and growth of colloids and recognized the crystalline state of the colloid particles.

He developed a method of colloid production by mechanically rubbing two indifferent substances and received a patent in 1912 for dissolving cellulose in dilute hydrochloric acid and in 1925 for natural silk in hydrochloric acid.

In 1932 he received the Laura R. Leonard Prize of the Colloid Society .

literature

• Wolfgang Ostwald : PP von Weimarn 1879–1935, in: Kolloid-Zeitschrift 74/1936, issue 1, pp. 1–10 (with list of publications).
• Entry in Winfried Pötsch, Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists. With the collaboration of Heinz Cassebaum. Frankfurt am Main / Thun: Harri Deutsch, 1989.
• Entry in JC Poggendorff's biographical-literary concise dictionary for mathematics, astronomy, physics with geophysics, chemistry, crystallography and related fields of knowledge, Vol. 6: 1923–1931, Part 4: S – Z, Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1940, p. 2833 -2836.
• Entry in JC Poggendorff: Biographisch-literarisches hand dictionary of exact natural sciences, vol. 7 b, part 9: Vo – Z, reporting years 1932–1962, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992, p. 5923.
• Klaus Beneke, in: Gerhard Lagaly, Oliver Schulz, Ralf Zimehl: Dispersions and emulsions: An introduction to the colloidics of finely divided substances including clay minerals. With a historical contribution about colloid scientists by Klaus Beneke. Darmstadt: Steinkopff, 1997, pp. 540-541.
• Matthias Bürgel: The Urals Mountain Institute in Ekaterinburg and Vladivostok 1914–1920: Russian university development between the revolutions, in: Yearbook for University History 14 (2011), pp. 125–148.

Fonts

• The colloidal state as a general property of matter , 3 parts, J. Russ. Phys. Chem. Ges., 1906
• Basics of dispersoid chemistry , Dresden: Steinkopff 1911, digitized version
• On the doctrine of the states of matter , Dresden: Steinkopff 1914
• Colloidal and crystalloid dissolving and precipitation , 2 volumes, Kyoto 1921, 2nd edition as The generality of the colloid state: Colloidal and crystalloid dissolving and precipitating , Dresden / Leipzig: Steinkopff 1925
• On dyeing wood and similar materials by means of dispersoidal precipitation of substances , Osaka: Reports of the Imperial Industrial Research Institute 1923

Individual evidence

1. ↑ PP von Weimarn: The generality of the colloid state . Dresden / Leipzig 1925, p. 455 f .
2. ^ The generality of the colloid state . S. VII (note 1) and IX (note 1) .
3. ↑ JC Poggendorff: Biographical-literary concise dictionary of the exact natural sciences . 7 b, part 9: Vo-Z, reporting years 1932-1962. Berlin 1992, p. 5923 .
4. ↑ In English mostly Weimarn's law.
5. ↑ Weimarn, On the historical development of the idea of ​​the generality of the colloid state together with some data from the history of the expansion of the term “colloid state” in terms of scope and content , in: Kolloidchemische Beihefte 18/1923, pp. 165–196, here p 165 (note 1).