Ivan Knunyants

Ivan Lyudvigovich Knunyants (Armenian: Իվան Կնունյանց, Russian: Иван Людвигович Кнунянц; 4 June [O.S. 22 May] 1906 (Shusha, Elisabethpol Governorate, Russian Empire) – 21 December 1990 (Moscow), was a Soviet chemist of Armenian origin, academic of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, a Major General and engineer, who significantly contributed to the advancement of Soviet chemistry. He made more than 200 inventions, many of which used in the Soviet industry.

Graduated from Moscow Bauman Highest Technical School (MVTU) 1928, student of Aleksei Chichibabin. Leader of laboratory for elementooranic chemistry.

He was one of the pioneers of the synthesis of poly-caprolactam (capron, nylon-6, polyamide-6), founder of Soviet school of fluorocarbon's chemistry, one of major developers of Soviet chemical weapons program, also an author of a few drugs for chemotherapy of cancer.

He proposed the method of getting the 5-hydroxypentan-2-one from ethyl ethanoate and oxirane, also used in the industrial synthesis of vitamin B. His scientific group synthesized compounds containing fluorine, along with nitro-, amino-hydroxy-isoquinoline-air and other groups.

Hero of Socialist Labor (1966). Lenin Prize (1972). Stalin Prize (1943, 1948 and 1950).