Brodsky, Oleksander

Brodsky, Oleksander [Бродський, Олександер; Brods'kyj], b 19 June 1895 in Katerynoslav, d 21 August 1969 in Kyiv. Physical chemist, full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1939 and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1943. In 1939 Brodsky became director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. His works are devoted to the thermodynamics and electrochemistry of solutions. He was the first to produce heavy water in the Soviet Union (1934). He developed a general theory for isolating isotopes and some methods for analyzing them. Brodsky wrote a number of textbooks and monographs, among them Khimiia izotopov (The Chemistry of Isotopes, 1952), the first such work in the field, and Fizicheskaia khimiia (Physical Chemistry, 2 vols, 1948).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]