the tsarist Minister of Education Lev Kasso. From 1911 to 1917 he worked as a professor at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. In 1917 he returned to Moscow University. There he was a professor of the Department of Chemistry (1917-1929) of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty, then he became a head of the Department of Organic Chemistry (1929-1930 and 1933-1938), a head of the Department of Petroleum Chemistry (1938-1953), a head of the Laboratory of Antibiotics and Biogenic Bases (1950-1953), Faculty of Chemistry. Also, he was a head of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Chemical Department (1932-1933). Since 1935 he actively participated in the organization of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences, later he headed a number of its laboratories. On July 10, 1941 Zelinsky joined the Scientific and Technical Council for the development and testing of scientific works related to military defense, chaired by the authorized State Defense Committee, Professor Sergei Kaftanov. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked in evacuation until the summer of 1943. Zelinsky took part in work to improve the quality of aviation gasolines and lubricating oils. A new process has been developed to produce high octane fuel; new catalysts were found for the processes of aromatization of oil and the production of defense products. Under the leadership of Zelinsky, the process of catalytic cracking of oil was studied in detail with the determination of the chemical nature of its products by spectral methods. Zelinsky also supervised work on finding ways to rationally use the products of primary processing of solid fuels - coal, shale and peat. In this regard, the problem of separation of sulfur from shale resins has become important. Shale accounted for about three-quarters of the fuel reserves of the USSR, but their high sulfur content depreciated them as a raw material for motor fuel. During the war years Zelinsky found a solution to this problem by passing shale oils mixed with hydrogen over platinum or nickel on aluminum oxide at 300 °. Sulfur was removed as hydrogen sulfide. The development of petrochemistry in the USSR has led to a radical reconstruction of the oil refining industry for the production of artificial liquid fuel. As a result of scientific research, it has become possible to use not only liquid, but also solid fossil fuels as a valuable raw material for high-octane motor fuel and high-quality