Draft:Mark Dahlin

Dahlin was born on 25 March 1906, in Baku into a Jewish family. His father, Alexander Lazarevich Dahlin (?–1907), was a civil engineer.^[1] His mother was Anna Markovna Dahlina (1871–1956).

After graduating from the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute in 1930, the young engineer Mark Dahlin led a team of specialists at the Azerbaijan Petroleum Research Institute to develop a technology for producing ethyl alcohol. In 1934, an experimental synthetic rubber plant (AzSK – Azerbaidzhansky Sinteticheskiy Kauchuk) was established, and the 28-year-old Dahlin was appointed its chief engineer and, subsequently, its director.

From 1935 onward, under Dahlin's leadership at the AzSK pilot plant, processes were developed for the pyrolysis of various petroleum feedstocks, separation of pyrolysis gas, synthesis of ethyl and isopropyl alcohol via direct and sulfuric acid hydration methods, and alkylation of benzene with ethylene and propylene using aluminium chloride. This period became the defining chapter of Dahlin's life, and his entire subsequent professional career remained connected to AzSK.

In 1962, on Dahlin's initiative, the All-Union Scientific Research Technological Institute for the Production and Processing of Low-Molecular Olefins was established, and he served as its uninterrupted director until 1987. A gas separation unit operating at the pilot plant produced ethylene and propylene of polymerization-grade purity. Based on these pure products, numerous syntheses of key petrochemical products were developed and tested at pilot-industrial scale under Dahlin's leadership between 1960 and 1990.

Thanks to Dahlin's refined engineering intuition, process development was carried out without a laboratory research stage, directly in the institute's pilot workshops — significantly reducing the time from concept to implementation. Many of Dahlin's developments were implemented on a large industrial scale in Russia, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.

The institute's high scientific standards, broad research scope, and the exceptional personality of its director attracted the attention of foreign companies during the 1970s and 1980s. The institute hosted activities under UNIDO, the United Nations, and COMECON, as well as international and industry conferences. Joint projects were carried out with:

• Rohm and Haas (USA) on the synthesis of methacrylic compounds
• Distillers Co. (UK) and SOHIO (USA) on the oxidative ammonolysis of propylene
• The French Institute of Petroleum on the dehydrogenation of n-paraffins

Dahlin's vast erudition, extensive practical experience, and remarkable scientific intuition allowed him to identify and solve critical problems across a wide range of industrial petrochemistry disciplines. Under his leadership, the scientific foundations were developed for processing numerous products and new technological methods, patented in many industrially developed countries across America and Europe — including the synthesis of acrylonitrile, ethylene-propylene rubber|ethylene-propylene elastomers, and high-density polyethylene.

Dahlin authored hundreds of scientific works and inventions. His monographs on petrochemistry served as educational and professional development resources for petrochemists across multiple generations, including internationally.

Academician Dahlin's outstanding contributions to science and industry were recognized with numerous high government honours:

• Order of Lenin
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (twice)
• Order of the Badge of Honour
• Multiple medals
• In 1996, by decree of President Heydar Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Dahlin was awarded Azerbaijan's highest honour — the Order of Glory (Azerbaijan)|Order of Glory (Şöhrət)