Freidlina, Rakhil Khatskelevna

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FREIDLINA, RAKHIL KHATSKELEVNA

FREIDLINA, RAKHIL KHATSKELEVNA (1906–1986), Russian organic chemist. She graduated from Moscow University in 1930 and worked until 1934 at the Scientific Research Institute of Insectofungicides. In 1935–39 and 1941–45, she served at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences; in the intervening period she was at the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology. In 1945 she was appointed chief of the laboratory of the Institute of Organometallic Compounds of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, and in 1958 became a corresponding member of the Academy. She contributed many papers to Soviet scientific journals. Some dealt with homolytic isomerization of organic compounds in solution, and her work on telomerization led to the development of the chemical precursors of some of the synthetic fibers now being made in Russia. Most of her work was with organometallic compounds. She was the author of Sinteticheskiye metody v oblasti metalloorganicheskikh soyedineniy myshyaka ("Synthetic methods … Organoarsenic Compounds," 1945) and coauthor of Khimiya kvazikompleksnykh metalloorganicheskikh soyedineniy iyavleniya tautomerii ("Chemistry of Quasicomplex Organometallic Compounds …," 1947).

[Samuel Aaron Miller]