A G Stromberg — First Class Scientist, Second Class Citizen

The following sections are included:

• Foreword

• Contents

• List of Tables and Figures

Russia, despite the name and the popular image, is a nation whose population comprises relatively few ethnic Russians. Historically the Russ, those Scandinavians that migrated into the Novgorod region in the 10^th century, are latecomers to the melting pot of peoples that occupy the vast stretches of land between the Ukrainian border and the Pacific rim. Undoubtedly, the political centre of gravity of the Russian state in all the forms it has taken over the centuries was — and remains to this day — the region west of the Urals, which we now associate with modern day Moscow and St. Petersburg…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Ancestry and Nationality

• Armin's Parents Heinrich and Magda

• A World Turned Upside Down

• Revolution and a Second Shock for Magda

• Educating Armin

• Walking on the Edge of a Precipice

• Scientific Isolation

In 1937 Armin G. Stromberg became engaged to Lydia Mikhaylovna Poponina (1912–1962). She was the daughter of illiterate parents who served the landed aristocracy of Shevelin, a region in the Southern Urals. Her father, keen to take advantage of the new opportunities for the poor in post-Revolutionary Russia, had encouraged all five of his children to gain an education. Armin and Lidusya were married upon the completion of her physics degree from Leningrad University that same year…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• The 1959 Nobel Prize for Chemistry Goes to Electroanalysis

• The Origins of Polarography

• Polarography Revolutionizes Analytical Chemistry

• Polarography Changes: Pulse Voltammetry, Static Mercury Drops and Stripping Voltammetry

• Polarography Arrives in the USSR

• Stromberg's Research in Sverdlovsk: Wartime and After

• Chelyabinsk

• Stromberg is Sacked — An Academic Life Begins

The following sections are included:

• Early Years In Tomsk: 1956–1962

• The Special Research Laboratory: 1962–1985

• Life as a Graduate Student in the Special Research Laboratory

• Stromberg and Semchenko: Physical Chemistry

• Stromberg's Reflections on Running His Laboratory and on His Relationships with the Scientific Community

• The Special Research Laboratory: The Science

• Appendix

The following sections are included:

• Leaving the Department in 1985 to Retire

• Perestroika and Stromberg's Return to Nizhni Tagil

• Science in Retirement: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

• Hobbies
  • Vita Brevis Est… Ut Volito Oportet!