Heinrich Wilhelm von Struve
Russian chemist (1822–1908)
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Heinrich Wilhelm von[a] Struve (Russian: Генрих Васильевич Струве, romanized: Genrikh Vasilyevich Struve; 10 July 1822 – 28 March 1908) was a Russian chemist of Baltic German descent.[1][2] He was from the Struve family and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[3]
Early life
Struve was born in 1822 in Dorpat in the Russian Empire (present-day Estonia). His father was the Russian astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve (1793–1864), of German origin. Bernhard Wilhelm Struve (1827–1889), the governor of Astrakhan and Perm, was his brother. The German mathematician and pedagogue Jacob Struve (1755–1841) was his grandfather.
Career
In 1845, he graduated from the Imperial University of Dorpat and continued working there in the field of chemistry until 1849. In 1846, via arrangement by his father Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, Genrikh spent a month visiting Jöns Jacob Berzelius who was impressed with both the father and his son.[4]
In 1849, Struve moved to the Mineralogy Department in Saint Petersburg and worked there until 1867. In 1867, he became a criminal medicine expert in Tiflis.[4][5][6] There, he used not only chemical, but also early photographical (1885) methods for criminal analysis.[7] He had also participated in the chemical analysis of mineral springs of the area, in particular of the Matsesta spring in Sochi in 1886.[8]
Struve married Pauline Fuss, a great-granddaughter of Leonhard Euler.[9][10]
Struve's scientific work was mostly related to inorganic and analytical chemistry. In 1853, he published first in Russia tables for evaluating chemical analyses. The same year, he suggested use of ammonium molybdate for detection of arsenic in criminal medicine and in mineral analysis, such as indicating traces of arsenic in antimony. He also synthesized a range of double salts of potassium, sodium, chromium, iron, aluminium, molybdenum and tungsten. In 1876, Struve became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[5][11]
Notes
- Regarding personal names: von was a title before 1919, but now is regarded as part of the surname. It is translated as . Before the August 1919 abolition of nobility as a legal class, titles preceded the full name when given (Graf Helmuth James von Moltke). Since 1919, these titles, along with any nobiliary prefix (von, zu, etc.), can be used, but are regarded as a dependent part of the surname, and thus come after any given names (Helmuth James Graf von Moltke). Titles and all dependent parts of surnames are ignored in alphabetical sorting.