STAR OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE



Although the spectrum of scientific interests of V.V. Voevodsky was exceptionally wide, and during his relatively short life he had accomplished incredibly much in very diverse fields of science, in essence he was always approaching one major problem – the physico-chemical mechanism of an elementary chemical step.

The scientific career of V. Voevodsky started in 1940 with a series of already classic studies on the mechanism of hydrogen combustion. He made a significant experimental and theoretical contribution to the development of the theory of chain branched gas-phase reactions. The last 10-12 years most of his time V. Voevodsky devoted to works related to application of electron paramagnetic resonance in chemistry. For V. Voevodsky magnetic radiospectroscopy was never the end in itself. He earlier then others realized the unique adequacy of the approaches of magnetic radiospectroscopy to chemical problems, the adequacy ultimately determined by the closeness of the range of frequencies used in these methods to the inverse characteristic times of elementary chemical steps.

V. Voevodsky was confident that the proceeding of a chemical process is determined not only by strong interactions related to large changes in the energies of the interacting species, but also by weak interaction that control, influence the probability of the process practically without affecting the energy spectrum. He hoped that the methods of magnetic radiospectroscopy would help him prove this general idea.

V. Voevodsky without doubts can be considered one of the founders of a new field of science – chemical magnetic radiospectroscopy. He made a significant contribution not only to the development of the theory of ESR as a method for chemical studies, in the development of new types of spectrometers specifically tailored for chemical research, but also to applications of the methods of magnetic radiospectroscopy for solution of the most important problems of modern theoretical chemistry. Those include the free radical mechanisms of chemical reactions, the phenomena of delocalization and electron transfer, the elementary steps occurring upon radiolysis of solids and liquids, the mechanisms of photochemical and photobiological processes, the peculiarities of the kinetic of radical reactions in solid phase, the mechanisms of heterogeneous catalysis and other reactions at the surfaces. The contribution of V. Voevodsky to the development of all these areas of chemical physics can not be stressed enough.

L.Blumenfeld, Yu.Molin 1972

L.Blumenfeld, Yu. Molin, Star of the first magnitude // Science in Siberia - 1992. – No.28. - p.3.