Frumkin, Aleksandr Naumovich

FRUMKIN, ALEKSANDR NAUMOVICH (1895–1976), Russian physical chemist. He graduated from the University of Odessa in 1915, where he taught 1920–22. In 1928–29 he was a lecturer on colloid chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, and from 1930 professor of electrochemistry at the University of Moscow. Frumkin was director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences 1939–49, and from 1958 of the Academy's Institute of Electrochemistry. He became an academician in 1932, and was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1931 and the Stalin Prize in 1941. He wrote on surface phenomena, the theory of electrochemical processes, the electric double layer, diffusion processes in solution under the influence of electric fields, and other topics. His work was applied in the U.S.S.R. to the generation of electricity by chemical means, the wetting of metals by electrolytes, flotation, and heterogenous catalysis. He was the author of Elektrokapillyarnye yavleniya i elektrodnye potentsialy ("Electrocapillary Effects and Electrode Potentials," 1919) and a coauthor of Kinetika elektrodnykh protsessov ("Kinetics of Electrode Processes," 1952).