by Academician Leopold LEONTYEV, Director of the Metallurgy Institute (IMET), Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences; and Vladimir PONOMARYOV, IMET Academic Secretary Towards the end of the 1920s the Urals became a booming industrial region of this country. And so there was a felt need for an adequate R&D base. Accordingly, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR opened its branch in the Urals in January 1932. Research scientists involved with metallurgy figured prominently there... page 4 One of them was Vladimir Mikhailov, full member of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan-a man who initiated basic research into comprehensive uses of multicomponent mineral wealth in the Urals. Working side by side with him was Dr. Nikolai Diyev, a pioneer in the theory and practice of nonferrous metallurgy. We might as well name a galaxy of outstanding scientists wedded to their cause. For one, Grigory Chufarov, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, has made a major contribution to the advancement of academic science in the Urals. His theory of oxide metal reduction has found broad practical application. He has suggested many innovative methods and techniques. For instance, using a sulphuric acid solution for pickling; or a technique of decarburization in prehydrogen firing to improve the ferromagnetic characteristics of transformer and dynamo steels; these methods are employed at the Verkh-Isetsk Steel Plant in Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals. Early in the 1960s Dr. Chufarov's laboratory pioneered in a new line of research, the thermodynamics of ferrites; accordingly, appropriate methods and techniques had to be designed for the purpose (X-ray, magnetic, electron-diffraction ones). Grigory Chufarov's pupils and followers then carried out extensive physicochemical studies into the complex oxide systems of transition metals (ferrites, man-ganites, aluminates, titanates, etc.) with a structure of spinelite, garnet and perovskite. (*) These research ... Читать далее