Anna Gelman

Anna Dmitrievna Gelman (also Dmitriyevna/Dmitryevna) (Russian: Гельман Анна Дмитриевна) (18 February 1902 — 29 March 1991) (née Nikitin) was a Soviet and Russian chemist and engineer. She was the first to synthesise alkene complexes of platinum, discovered heptavalent states of plutonium and other actinides and created and improved processes for radionuclide production.

Life and career She was born in Biysk, Altai Krai, Siberia. Her mother was a seamstress and her father a woodman. Her father died when she was seven, so she helped her mother with her three younger siblings. Aged eight, she went to school and graduated with a merit certificate. She attended Biysk Women's High School and because of her study efforts was released from school fees. She graduated in 1921 but had not received appropriate education to enrol at Tomsk University, 450 km to the north. She underwent two years of self-study while teaching in a Tomsk orphanage, before being accepted on a one-year course in Leningrad, 3400 km from her home town. While there, she married August Ansovich Gelman, a border guard. Thereafter, she lived in different border posts of Siberia and central Asia while teaching.

In 1928, she was transferred to the Crimea for health reasons. In 1930, she enrolled at the Crimean Pedagogical Institute. She studied in the department of chemistry and worked in a bromine plant in the town of Saki. In the spring of 1932, her husband died. That autumn, she graduated and was recommended for postgraduate studies at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. She passed the entrance exams but also took the exams for graduate studies. The course leader, I.I. Chernyaev, told her she had the knowledge but that, aged 30, she was too old to study science. She made it clear she was offended, and Chernyaev took her under his supervision. From 1932 to 1936, she was a graduate student and a senior research associate at the Institute of National Economy and Leningrad State University. In 1934, she published her first work, under her maiden name, Nikitin, as an engineer: the VIAM (All-union Institute for Aviation Materials (Russian:Всесоюзный институт авиационных материалов)) production instruction. She was a part-time assistant professor at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the university from 1936 to 1938. Chernyaev invited her to become a doctoral student at the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry in Moscow in 1938. She gained a Ph.D. in 1941 and worked as a senior researcher at the Institute until 1949.

Gelman returned to Moscow in 1952, securing 50 grammes of plutonium dioxide from Combine No.817 for researchers to use at the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry. The compound was used in the doctoral theses of students who went on to become leading researchers at the plutonium plant. She became part-time deputy chief of the plant, working in the radiochemical research section. She married Boris Musrukov, director of the plant and major-general of the engineering service. He was soon transferred to the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and, in 1955, he was appointed director of Arzamas-16, (also known as KB-11 [Design Bureau-11] based at the closed city of Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod oblast. Gelman raised his two children and, after separating from him, his daughter Elena remained with Gelman.

In 1971, Gelman put forward the 38-year-old N.N. Krot as her replacement as the laboratory director, over the objections of some of the Academic Council of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences. She remained in a consulting role.

She died on 29 March 1994 in Moscow. She was buried at Novokuntsevo cemetery.

Awards 1949: State Prize of the USSR, Order of Stalin, Stalin Prize, Order of the Red Banner of Labour, D.I. Mendeleev award. 1951: Council of Ministers Prize. 1982: D.I. Mendeleev award (with N.N. Krot and F.A. Sakharov) 1984: State Prize of the USSR.