Aram Nalbandyan

In 1967 Nalbandyan and his wife moved from Moscow to Yerevan, where he was appointed Director of the Laboratory of Chemical Physics. He was also elected academician-secretary of the Department of Chemistry of the Armenian AS. In 1975 the laboratory was reorganized as the Yerevan Institute of Chemical Physics. Until the very end of his life (January 24, 1987) Nalbandyan was the Director and scientific leader of the institute which now bears his name.

A.B. Nalbandyan died on January 24, 1987, in Yerevan.

Nalbandyan was actively involved in scientific and social activities; he was Chief Editor of the Armenian Chemical Journal, a member of the editorial board of the journal Khimicheskaya Fizika, a member of the editorial committee of the Armenian Encyclopedia, and a member of the Terminology Committee under the Council of Ministers of Armenian SSR. He also paid attention to establishing and developing international relationships, participated in many international conferences and symposiums, and often gave lectures outside of the USSR. These included a course of lectures in Canada, lectures in the Goettingen University (1973) as a Gauss-Professor, and lectures in the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. In 1979 he joined the New York Academy of Sciences.

A series of researches on the mechanism of methane oxidation resulted in a proposal for the industrial production of formaldehyde by direct methane oxidation. In 1962 the authors of this work, headed by Nalbandyan, were awarded a Big Gold Medal of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements of the USSR.

In 1959 Nalbandyan published a popular scientific book entitled Formaldehyde - a Material for Plastics, written jointly with N.S. Enikolopyan .

In 1959, at the suggestion of the Presidium of the Armenian AS, Nalbandyan founded the Laboratory of Chemical Physics, a new scientific center in Yerevan. In 1960 he was elected a Corresponding member, and in 1963 a full member of the Armenian AS.

From 1957 to 1966 Nalbandyan headed the Laboratory of Hydrocarbon Oxidation at Institute of Chemical Physics AS USSR (Moscow). From 1951 to 1959 was the Chair of the Department of Physics at the Moscow Electrotechnical Institute of Communications.

In 1949 jointly with V.V. Voyevodsky he published the monograph "Mechanism of Hydrogen Oxidation and Combustion" . This monograph was honored with D.I. Mendeleev's Prize in 1952.

During World War II, the Institute of Chemical Physics was relocated from Leningrad to the city of Kazan. There, while his wife Bella L. Nalbandyan (Sinaeva) worked as a Medical Chief of the Army Hospital, Nalbandyan studied methods of production of explosives and their characteristics. For his achievements he was awarded with the medal for Heroic Labor During the Great Patriotic War (1946).

On the basis of his experimental and theoretical research, Nalbandyan obtained his Candidate (1935) and Doctoral (1943) degrees.

In 1931 a new Institute of Chemical Physics (ICP) was created in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg). The position of the chief of Institute was assigned to N.N. Semenov, the disciple of the academician A. F. Ioffe. Semenov, the future Nobel prize winner, had big plans for developing science at his institute. To carry out these plans he decided to involve young talented graduates from other cities of the USSR. From the Yerevan State University, Aram Nalbandyan was chosen to go to Leningrad where he joined the group of highly motivated young scientists.

Nalbandyan's research was dedicated to the studies of the kinetics and mechanism of branched chain reactions. Between 1931 and 1950 he investigated in detail the mechanism of oxidation of hydrogen as an example of a branched chain reaction. The collected experimental data and its careful theoretical processing became a brilliant proof of the main principles of the theory of the branched chain reactions that were formulated by N.N. Semenov.

After school in Karaklise, Nalbandyan started his education in the Department of Physics and Mathematics of Pedagogical Faculty of the Yerevan State University. Many highly educated Armenians, including graduates from the universities of Moscow, Petersburg and Europe, were teaching there at that time. Among them were professors of physics H. Navakatikyan and H. Anjour, professor of mathematics B. Bagaturyan, professor of physical chemistry L. Rotinyan, and academician A. Hakopyan. They all contributed greatly to the development of young Aram Nalbandyan. As a student, Nalbandyan worked at the laboratory and participated in the scientific club led by H. Navakatikyan. After graduating from the university in 1930, he worked at the department as an assistant and also delivered lectures on molecular physics.

Aram Bagrati "Bagratovich" Nalbandyan (Armenian: Արամ Բագրատի Նալբանդյան, January 1, 1908 – January 24, 1987) was a Soviet Armenian physicist, prominent in the field of physical chemistry, founder of the Institute of Chemical Physics in Yerevan, Armenia, and academician-secretary of the Chemical Department of the Armenian Academy of Sciences (AS). He is the author of more than 400 scientific articles and five monographs.

Aram Nalbandyan was born in 1908 in Karaklise (Kirovakan, now Vanadzor). He lost his father at an early age. His grandfather, a farrier, raised him, implanting a love for work and appreciation for nature. Nalbandyan received his general education at the local school.