The Estonian scientist who blocked phosphorite mining from inside the system
He stood out in TV debates by carrying a portfolio of documents and smoothly pulling out the relevant one to prove his point whenever opponents challenged him.
Estonian chemical physicist and politician. After studying oil-shale technology at Tallinn Polytechnic, he built the Soviet bloc's first NMR spectrometer and became a pioneer of high-resolution solid-state NMR spectroscopy. As a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, he led scientists in exposing the environmental and demographic dangers of planned phosphorite mines in 1987, providing the intellectual foundation for the 'Phosphorite War,' a catalyst for mass resistance and the independence movement. As a USSR People's Deputy, he unearthed and publicised the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, demolishing the legal basis for the Baltic annexation; after independence he served twice as a government minister.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1953Graduated from Tallinn Polytechnic, oil-shale technology
- 1956PhD in chemistry
- 1969DSc in physics and mathematics, USSR Institute of Chemical Physics
- 1972Elected Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences
- 1975Full Academician, Estonian Academy of Sciences; board member until 2014
- 1980Founded and directed the Institute of Chemical and Biological Physics
- 1989–1991USSR People's Deputy; exposed the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet Pact
- 1990–1991Minister for Eastern Affairs, Republic of Estonia
- 1995–1996Minister of European Affairs, Republic of Estonia
- 1996–1999Member of the Riigikogu (parliament)
Related historical events
From oil-shale chemistry to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
Lippmaa's academic career ran from Estonia's industrial speciality, oil shale, to spectroscopy of world standing. He graduated from Tallinn Polytechnic Institute in 1953 majoring in oil shale technology, defended a candidate dissertation there in 1956 on the dynamics of Estonian oil-shale products obtained by thermal decomposition, and then closed that line of research to move into an entirely new field, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which he pursued for roughly half a century. In 1969 he received his doctor of physical and mathematical sciences degree at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences for a thesis on the Overhauser nuclear effect and the structure of organic compounds, and in 1971 he was granted the professorship in chemical physics and physical chemistry.
His research centred on high-resolution solid-state NMR. His 1980 study of the 29Si solid-state NMR structure of silicates is regarded as pioneering work showing that high-resolution NMR could be applied profitably to inorganic materials, not only to organic or biological samples. From 1961 to 1980 he headed the physics section of the Institute of Cybernetics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences; from 1980 he directed the Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (KBFI), which he founded, until 2001, and headed its chemical physics laboratory until 2005. From 2001 to 2006 he directed the Centre of Excellence in Analytical Spectrometry, and later turned his attention to high-energy particle physics at CERN.
He was elected to the Estonian Academy of Sciences in 1972, becoming a full member in 1975, and served on the academy board from 1975, as academic secretary of the division of physics, mathematics and engineering from 1977 to 1982, and as head of the division of astronomy and physics from 1999 to 2004. Even in the Soviet period he engaged widely with international scholarship, becoming a member of the American Physical Society (1975) and the American Chemical Society (1975), and later of the Finnish Academy of Science (1990) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (1992). He received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Centenary Lectureship medal in 1989 and the Max Planck Research Award in 1992, and in 1999 was voted one of the 100 great Estonians of the 20th century.