Boris Derjaguin

Boris Derjaguin
Born
Boris Vladimirovich Derjaguin

(1902-08-09)9 August 1902
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died16 May 1994(1994-05-16) (aged 91)
Moscow, Russian Federation
Known forDerjaguin approximation
DLVO theory
DMT model
Diffusiophoresis
Disjoining pressure
Polywater
AwardsUSSR State Prize (1990)
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics
Physical chemistry

Boris Vladimirovich Derjaguin (or Deryagin; Russian: Бори́с Влади́мирович Деря́гин) (9 August 1902 in Moscow – 16 May 1994) was a Soviet and Russian chemist. As a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he laid the foundation of the modern science of colloids and surfaces. An epoch in the development of the physical chemistry of colloids and surfaces is associated with his name.

Derjaguin became famous in scientific circles for his work on the stability of colloids and thin films of liquids which is now known as the DLVO theory, after the initials of its authors: Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek. It is universally included in text books on colloid chemistry and is still widely applied in modern studies of interparticle forces in colloids. In particular, the Derjaguin approximation is widely used in order to approximate the interaction between curved surfaces from a knowledge of the interaction for planar ones.

Derjaguin was also briefly involved in polywater research during the 1960s and early 1970s. This field claimed that if water was heated then cooled in quartz capillaries, it took on astonishing new properties. Eventually, the scientists who were involved in polywater admitted it did not exist, claiming they were misled by poorly designed experiments (Derjaguin rejected polywater in 1973[1]).

He is also known for having hotly rejected[2] some of the then-new ideas of adhesion as presented by the Western bloc[3] in the 1970s. His model came to be known as the DMT (after Derjaguin, Muller and Toporov) model,[3] while the model presented by Western bloc scientists came to be known as the JKR (after Johnson, Kendall and Roberts)[4] model for adhesive elastic contact. This rejection proved to be instrumental in the development of the D. Tabor[5][6] and later D. Maugis[2][7] parameters that quantify which contact model (of the JKR and DMT models) represent adhesive contact better for specific materials.

  1. ^ Derjaguin, B. V.; Churaev, N. V. (1973). "Nature of "anomalous water"". Nature. 244 (5416): 430–431. Bibcode:1973Natur.244..430D. doi:10.1038/244430a0. S2CID 4293924.
  2. ^ a b D. Maugis, Contact, Adhesion and Rupture of Elastic Solids, Springer-Verlag, Solid-State Sciences, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-540-66113-1
  3. ^ a b B. V. Derjaguin, V. M. Muller and Y. P. Toporov, "Effect of contact deformations on the adhesion of particles", J. Colloid Interface Sci. 53 (1975), pp. 314-325
  4. ^ K. L. Johnson, K. Kendall and A. D. Roberts, "Surface energy and the contact of elastic solids", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 324 (1971), pp. 301-313
  5. ^ D. Tabor, "The hardness of solids", Rev. Phys. Technol. 1 (1970), pp. 145-179
  6. ^ D. Tabor, "Surface forces and surface interactions", J. Colloid Interface Sci. 58 (1977), pp. 2-13
  7. ^ D. Maugis, "Adhesion of spheres: The JKR-DMT transition using a Dugdale model", J. Colloid Interface Sci. 150 (1992), pp. 243-269