Julia Lermontova

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Julia Lermontova (1846–1919) was a Russian chemist and the first Russian woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry.

She grew up in St. Petersburg and Moscow, educated by private tutors. At first she wanted to study medicine, but she didn’t like the sight of skeletons or the poverty of patients. After her application to a Russian chemistry college was rejected, she decided to study abroad. Through help from friends, she could go to university overseas. In 1869 she arrived in Heidelberg, where she could sit in on Robert Bunsen’s lectures and work in his laboratory, researching platinum compounds. She then moved to Berlin to work with August Wilhelm von Hofmann and published her first paper there. In 1874 she earned her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Göttingen, graduating magna cum laude and becoming the first woman ever to receive a chemistry PhD.

Back in Russia, she worked in Vladimir Markovnikov’s Moscow laboratory and later in St. Petersburg, invited by Alexander Butlerov. She studied 2-methyl-2-butenoic acid and did research on oil chemistry. She also developed a device for the continuous distillation of petroleum, though it could not be scaled for industry. At a Russian Chemical Society meeting in 1878, Butlerov noted that many of her ideas had been explored earlier, in what would be known as the Butlerov–Eltekov–Lermontova work.

In 1881 she became the first woman to join the Russian Technical Association. She later spent summers at her family’s Semenkovo estate and eventually lived there full-time, retiring from chemistry and turning to agricultural work, including making cheese that was sold across Russia and Ukraine. She became seriously ill in 1889 and, in 1890–1891, spent time with Sofia Kovalevskaya and her daughter Fufa. After the 1917 revolution, an attempt was made to nationalize the Semenkovo estate, but a government minister helped her keep it. Julia Lermontova died in 1919 from a brain hemorrhage. She never married, and her step-daughter Sofia (Fufa) Kovalevskaya inherited the estate.