A radiochemist who helped build the Soviet atomic project
Kurchatov’s urgent call in 1943 brought her back from evacuation to the front line of the atomic project.
Zinaida Yershova was a Soviet radiochemist who connected the industrial production of radioactive elements with nuclear chemistry. Recalled from evacuation in Kazakhstan at Igor Kurchatov’s request in 1943, she led work at Giredmet that produced uranium carbide and metallic uranium for research on the F-1 reactor. She later advanced plutonium, polonium, and tritium technologies, contributing to both the nuclear-weapons program and isotope power sources for space exploration.
Career Timeline
- 1923–1929Student at Moscow State University; research in radiochemistry
- 1930–1937Moscow Plant of Rare Elements, radium section; head of the physics laboratory
- 1936–1937Research training at the Paris Radium Institute under Irène Joliot-Curie
- 1938–1945Head of Giredmet’s radium laboratory; led production of uranium carbide and metallic uranium
- 1946–1948Head of the First Radiochemical Laboratory at the Institute of Special Materials, NII-9
- 1947–1954Research on plutonium, polonium, and tritium production technologies; received Stalin Prizes
- 1960년대–1989Research at VNIINM on polonium chemistry and isotope power sources