Paul Kogerman

Paul Nikolai Kogerman ( in Tallinn – 27 July 1951 in Tallinn) was an Estonian chemist and founder of modern research in oil shale.

Paul Kogerman was born into a family of gas factory worker (and former sailor). He went to an elementary school in 1901–1904 and a town school in 1904–1908. After town school Kogerman earned a living by teaching in church manors near Tallinn. In May 1921 he was given a qualification of chemical technologist by the University of London and in 1922 he received the degree of Master of Sciences. He was prematurely released and allowed to return to Estonia in 1945. From 1945 to 1951 he was director of the chair for organic chemistry at Tallinn University of Technology. From 1947 to 1950 he served also as the director of the Chemistry Institute of the Academy of Sciences.

Honors In 1927 Kogerman was decorated with the insignia of the Légion d'honneur and in 1938 with the Second Class of the Order of the White Star. In 2006 the Paul Kogerman scholarship was founded, to be granted to successful master's and doctoral level students of the Faculties of Science and Chemical and Materials Technology of the Tallinn University of Technology.

Significance Paul Kogerman won international reputation with his work on oil shale. He initiated systematic research of oil shale and its products by establishing, together with professor Michael Wittlich, a laboratory to study oil-bearing shales in 1925. Kogerman submitted fundamental work on the structure and origin of oil shale and its chemical characteristics, as well as work on thermal processes.

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Biography