MUSÉE ZELINSKY

This museum dedicated to Nikolai Zelinsky is located near the National Museum. It honors the chemist Nikolai Zelinsky, born on February 6, 1861 in Tiraspol. After studying at the universities of Odessa, Leipzig and Göttingen, he taught at Moscow University from 1893 and was one of the theorists of organic catalysis. Zelinsky became famous for inventing the first gas mask with activated carbon filter in 1915. He was a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and President of the Moscow Society of Naturalists. He was awarded the Lenin Order and the Stalin Prize on several occasions. He died in Moscow in 1953. His name was given to a crater on the Moon and to the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A Transnistrian coin was struck in his effigy in 2001. The museum is housed in four rooms of the scientist's former family home. It is recognizable by its late 19th-century architecture and red roof. It contains a Dutch oven, a typewriter, test tubes and other scientific instruments, a piano, a very old telephone, furniture and documents from the family archives. It is well preserved. It is the only museum in the world dedicated to Nikolai Zelinsky, whose work made an important contribution to science. He is seen as the "child of the country" and is the pride of many Transnistrians. This museum will be of interest to scientists and in particular to chemists.