of the Ukrainian State. Kistiakowsky attended private schools in Kyiv and Moscow until the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917. He then joined the anti-Communist White Army. In 1920 he escaped from Russia in a commandeered French ship. After spending time in Turkey and Yugoslavia, he made his way to Germany, where he enrolled at the University of Berlin later that year. In 1925, he earned his PhD in physical chemistry under the supervision of Max Bodenstein, writing his thesis on the photochemical decomposition of chlorine monoxide and ozone. He then became Bodenstein's graduate assistant. His first two published papers were elaborations of his thesis, co-written with Bodenstein. In 1926, Kistiakowsky traveled to the United States as an International Education Board fellow. Hugh Stott Taylor, another student of Bodenstein, accepted Bodenstein's assessment of Kistiakowsky, and gave him a place at Princeton University. That year, Kistiakowsky married a Swedish Lutheran woman, Hildegard Moebius. In 1928, they had a daughter, Vera, who, in 1972 became the first woman appointed as a professor of physics at MIT. When Kistiakowsky's two-year fellowship ran out in 1927, he received a Research Associate and DuPont Fellowship. On October 25, 1928, he became an associate professor at Princeton. Taylor and Kistiakowsky published a series of papers together. Encouraged by Taylor, Kistiakowsky also published an American Chemical Society monograph on photochemical processes. In 1930, Kistiakowsky joined the faculty of Harvard University, an affiliation that continued throughout his career. At Harvard, his research interests were in thermodynamics, spectroscopy, and chemical kinetics. He became increasingly involved in consulting for the government and industry. He became an associate professor again, this time at Harvard in 1933. That year he also became an American citizen. In 1938, he became the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry. World War II National Defense Research Committee Foreseeing an expanded role for science in World War II, which the United States had not yet joined, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) on June 27, 1940, with Vannevar Bush as its chairman. James B. Conant, the President of Harvard, was appointed head of Division B, which was responsible for bombs, fuels, gases, and chemicals. He appointed Kistiakowsky to head its Section A-1, which was concerned with explosives. In June 1941, the NDRC was absorbed into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Bush became Chairman of the OSRD, Conant succeeded