During the differentiation of the different branches of chemistry, namely organic and inorganic chemistry, there are several Russian chemists that made important discoveries that progressed the science as a whole. One of these chemists is Alexander Butlerov who in 1864 prepared the first tertiary alcohol – tertiary butyl. More significant than Butlerov were the contributions of V.V. Markovnikov. Markovnikov was ultimately able to group his discoveries and theories together into what is now famously, or infamously depending on your feelings towards organic chemistry, known as Markovnikov’s rule. This rule allows the prediction of a major and minor product of an addition reaction (1). Possibly an even more well-known Russian chemist is Dmitri Mendeleev. Mendeleev is famous for his work with pioneering a reasonable system of classifying the elements into what is now known as the periodic table. Mendeleev ordered his elements via increasing atomic weight which caused him to begin to recognize certain patterns among the known elements. What separated Mendeleev from his contemporary Lothar Meyer, who was also working on organizing the elements, was that Mendeleev focused more on the chemical properties of the elements rather than their physical properties. Both Mendeleev and Meyer left open spaces in their tables for elements that they believe had not been discovered yet, however Mendeleev went so far as to speculate on the properties of these open spaces. He was overwhelmingly successful. His predictions for what is now gallium, scandium, and germanium were incredibly close to the actual properties that were measured once they were finally discovered (2). Arguably there was no focus on the entirety of Russian chemistry at any given time, but Russia produced several key players that had an enormous impact on the progress of chemistry.

References

(1). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markovnikov%27s_rule , accessed 11 Mar, 2015.

(2). H.M. Leicester. The Historical Background of Chemistry, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, USA, (1971) pp. 172-198.