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Guest editors’ tribute to Nina Fjodorovna Zakharchuk on the occasion of her 75th birthday on July 28th, 2012

2012; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 16; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s10008-012-1740-5

1433-0768

Fritz Scholz, Е. И. Короткова,

Electrochemical Analysis and Applications

Nina Fjodorovna Zakharchuk was born in Omsk Oblast (southwestern Siberia), the daughter of a farmer in the then Soviet Union. She studied chemistry at the University of Alma-Ata (now Almaty) in Kazakhstan where she worked for her PhD (in USSR/Russia: candidate of science degree) with Ol’ga Alfredovna Songina (1901–1989), one of the leading Soviet scientists in electrochemical analysis. Since 1966 she has worked at the Nikolaev Institute of Inorganic Chemistry in Novosibirsk (Akademgorodok), in the Analytical Laboratory which was headed from 1964–1989 by the famous analytical chemist Iosif Herschevich Judelevich (1920–1993). Over her lifetime, Nina Fjodorovna has contributed significantly to a wide spectrum of topics in electrochemistry and electroanalysis, especially stripping voltammetry. One of her most important achievements has been the development of electrochemical methods of phase analysis. In particular, she has developed techniques which allow one to obtain specific signals for various phases when the latter are present on electrode surfaces. This technique has found wide application in the phase analysis of oxide films on semiconductor surfaces. In addition, she has cooperated widely with solid state chemists inside her Institute, and has succeeded in studying the electrochemistry of various metal cluster compounds and high-temperature superconducting phases. Besides solid phase analysis, Nina Fjodorovna has also had a long-standing interest in graphite paste electrodes for electrochemical phase analysis, and several of her papers concern the preparation and properties of mercury film electrodes for stripping voltammetry of soluble species. Indeed, stripping voltammetry has always been of central concern to her, and in this field she has contributed a large number of important papers. Recently, she has even extended her research to the field of biochemical analysis, such as the determination of thiols and disulfides in blood. Her opus of papers is a treasure which has still not been fully exploited, especially outside the Russian-speaking world. Although she has published in English for two decades, a number of her major papers remain untranslated — a challenge for our Russian colleagues. This homage to Nina Fjodorovna Zakharchuk would be incomplete without some mention of her personality: she is a most modest scientist, indifferent to honours, preferment, or power (“... thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honour... but hast asked wisdom and knowledge for thyself,...; Wisdom and F. Scholz (*) Institut fur Biochemie, Universitat Greifswald, Felix-Hausdorff-Strase 4, 17487 Greifswald, Germany e-mail: fscholz@uni-greifswald.de