No. 2, 2009
Olga Romanovskaya
,
Cand. Sc.
THE RUSSIAN NOBEL PRIZE
120 years ago, a prize was founded in Russia in memory of the outstanding inventor and talented entrepreneur Ludvig Nobel
The latest Nobel Prize ceremonies were held on a grand scale in Stockholm at the end of last year. Many Russian and foreign publications included material on both the life and activities of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) and on the new winners of this prestigious international prize. Few people know, however, that, in the 19th century, there was a forerunner to this famous international prize. 120 years ago, in Russia, the Russian Technical Society founded a prize in the memory of the outstanding entrepreneur and inventor Ludvig Nobel (1831-1888), this being one of the most prestigious prizes in the Russian engineering community right up until 1917.
A tribute to the memory
The life and activities of the outstanding Russian entrepreneur and inventor Ludvig Nobel have long been overshadowed by the fame of his younger brother Alfred and only recently, thanks to the efforts of Russian historians, have more and more new facts from his work biography become known to the public, these testifying to his weighty contribution to the development of the Russian oil industry. In, for instance, 1879, the first year of operation of the Nobel Brothers's Oil Production Partnership, the volume of oil produced at the company's fields was not more than 5% of the amount produced in the country but, in 1881, 18,000,561 poods of oil were produced there, or 13.45% of Russian production, and in 1887, already 28,850,000 poods, or 18.5% of Russian and 7.1% of global production. From May 1879, the company was headed by Ludvig Nobel, who was not only an efficient top manager, but also a sort of "driver" of the innovative development of the Nobel Brothers's Oil Production Partnership.
The tense work soon undermined his strength, however, and on April 12, 1888, St. Petersburg heard from Cannes the grievous news that Ludvig Nobel had died at the age of 57. All the leading Russian and foreign publications marked this sad news with extensive announcements and obituaries highly appraising the great deeds of this exceptional man, who had served Russia with merit. In accordance with his will, Ludvig Nobel was buried on Russian soil, at the Smolenskoye Lutheran Cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Soon after his death, a General Meeting of Shareholders of the Nobel Brothers' Oil Production Partnership was held. A resolution was adopted to request that the management of the Russian Technical Society found a special prize and Gold Medal in memory of Ludvig Nobel.
At a General Meeting of the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTS) held in St. Petersburg on March 31, 1889, the anniversary of Ludvig Nobel's death, this initiative received unanimous approval and it was decided that "the honest, clever and energetic working life of this man, who served our Homeland, should be a good covenant" for the entire Russian engineering community. A resolution of the 9th General Meeting of Stockholders and Shareholders in the Partnership was announced, requesting that a Ludvig Nobel Prize be founded "for the best composition or research on the metal or oil industry (in general or in part) or for some outstanding inventions or improvements to the equipment of these types of production, bearing in mind their greatest practical application to development in Russia ... the prize will consist of the interest on the capital of 6,000 rubles contributed for this purpose and a Gold Medal."
Regulations on the Ludvig Nobel Prize and medal were soon drafted and approved by the Council of the IRTS.
The first Prize winner
On April 1, 1896, a meeting of the Council was held chaired by IRTS Chairman Mikhail Kazi, which approved the minutes of the commission for awarding the prize, signed by the members of the commission Professors I. Shreder, N. Kurnakov, A. Kurbatov, G. Zabudsky and V. Lipin and reading as follows: "On March 31, 1896, having considered the works submitted for the L.E. Nobel Prize, specifically: R. Ostreyko, ‘A new method for refining heavy types of oil not precipitating from water and on the effect of light and air on oil and its products'; A. Stepanov, ‘Fundamentals of lamp theory'; M. Sendzikovsky ‘On improvement of the Troponas converter process method' and V. Bernar, ‘A device and method for obtaining metals directly from ores' and proceeding on the basis of the reviews by Messrs. Shreder, Lipin and Kurbatov, we, the undersigned, have recognized the work of Mr. Stepanov as worthy of the prize for scientific statement and working of the question of moving oil along a wick and application of the results achieved to the theory of lamps."
On the basis of the existing Regulations, a closed ballot was held, in which 12 members of the IRTS Council took part, and this resolution was unanimously approved. The first winner of the Ludvig Nobel Prize was thus the technologist Alexey Stepanov (1866-1937), a graduate of the St. Petersburg Technological Institute and an associate of the Russian Technical Society laboratory.
As leading Russian specialists noted, the main significance of the work "Fundamentals of lamp theory" consisted in the author having been the first to analyze in detail the structural specifics of burner units of lamps and their use characteristics, to study and determine the character of the internal friction of kerosene and different oil fractions. He convincingly justified the conclusion that the volume of kerosene moving along the wick depends on its viscosity and not its specific weight, as had been thought previously. In addition, by means of a multitude of experiments, he invented a new type of viscometer.
The study by the technologist Alexey Stepanov provided a new impetus to the development of Russian lighting equipment production. He gave practical recommendations for improving the manufacturing technology for kerosene lamps in another book, entitled "Petroleum lamp oils and lamps for them" (1896).
The fact that Alexey Stepanov's book "Fundamentals of lamp theory" was soon translated into French and German and published separately abroad is evidence of the high appraisal and recognition of the scientific significance of his work among the international engineering community.
Testimony to his recognition in Russia as a leading specialist in the sphere of chemical engineering was provided by the fact that, in the spring of 1896, Alexey Stepanov was appointed expert on the oil industry at the All-Russia Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. In addition, the management of the IRTS made him responsible for managing the 5th experimental station for foodstuffs and excise production. At one of the concluding meetings of experts, Alexey Stepanov have an extensive report "On the situation in the oil industry," which was included in the summary collected materials of the Ministry of Finance of Russia "Success of Russian industry according to expert commission reviews." Subsequently, he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute and was appointed a Full State Counselor.
High appraisal of scientific success
In the second half of the 19th century in Russia, many Russian scientists and engineers tried to resolve the problem of transferring heat equipment from wood to oil fuel. The invention of the fuel oil burner in 1866 by retired Colonel Alexander Shpakovsky (1823-1881), using the principle of pulverization applied to steam boilers with liquid fuel, which constituted the main advantages, that is, lightness, absence of a chimney and sparks and rapid steam distribution, made it particularly useful everywhere that space, including for storing the fuel, was at a premium and reduced weight of the device was of significance. He wrote about this in his work "Comparative assessment of fuelling steam boilers with coal, turpentine and oil," published in the Sea Collection in 1866.
His successors, the engineer A.V. Kamensky, the mining engineer Milly Poretsky, the mechanic Otto Lenz, the mechanical engineer Vladimir Shukhov and others, subsequently successfully developed, in their inventions, the principles he established of atomized combustion of fuel oil, thereby providing for subsequent growth in the volume of fuel oil used in industry and in water and railway transport. In 1900, for instance, the amount of fuel oil used in industry and transport in Russia reached 100 million poods (compared to 50 million poods in 1890).
At the same time, for domestic purposes, including heating residential premises, there were problems in using industrial fuel oil burners. A way out of this difficult situation was proposed by IRTS member, State Counselor and talented inventor Vsevolod Baskakov (1835-after 1901). In his book "Oil heating of residential premises (without fuel oil burners): Six years' experience of using oil as a cheap and convenient fuel for domestic, agricultural and technical purposes," which came out in St. Petersburg in 1896, he convincingly justified the practical value of his invention, confirmed by many years of practical experience. In 1898, Vsevolod Baskakov was deservedly awarded the Ludvig Nobel Prize "for solving the problem of complete oil combustion without pulverization."
Another worthy winner of the Russian Nobel Prize was technical engineer Alexander Nikiforov, who managed to develop a technology for deep refining of crude oil to obtain aromatic hydrocarbons and create an efficient industrial unit for this process.
In the journal Works of the Baku Branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society, he published an article entitled "A description of the method and apparatus for breaking down oil hydrocarbons to obtain tar and gas for the purpose of producing aromatic hydrocarbons therefrom." In the article, he described his technological process and equipment in detail. News of the successful results of Alexander Nikiforov's work attracted the attention of active Russian entrepreneurs and, on April 21, 1901, the merchants Mikhail Losev and Pavel Solovyev founded the first Russian petrochemical company - Russian Partnership for Benzene-Aniline Production, with a capital of 400,000 rubles. Soon afterwards, in Kineshma, Russia's first petrochemical plant was built to produce man-made dyes using the new technology.
The fruitful, creative work of technical engineer Alexander Nikiforov became known and won recognition in the Russian scientific community. In 1905, by resolution of the IRTS Council, his method for obtaining benzene and its homologs from Russian oil won him the Ludvig Nobel Prize and Gold Medal.
When the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in November 1917, the Russian Technical Society ceased to exist and the Russian Nobel Prize was forgotten for many decades.
Today, on the initiative of the International Union of Scientific and Engineering Public Associations, certain efforts are being made in Russia to revive the Ludvig Nobel Prize and these efforts will bring the long-awaited positive result.
