Paul Kogerman

Paul Kogerman (born 23 Novemberjul / 5 December 1891greg in Tallinn, .. † July 27, 1951 ) was an Estonian chemist. He is known particularly for his work on oil shale.

Life and work

Paul Nikolai Kogerman was born into a seafaring family. He put his Abitur in 1913 as External in Tallinn. Kogerman completed his studies in 1918 at the University of Tartu. From 1919 to 1922 he continued his education with an Estonian state scholarship at Imperial College London. From 1921 to 1936 he worked at the University of Tartu, starting in 1925 with the rank of professor. 1926 and 1933 he was a guest lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and in 1927/28 at Harvard University. In 1934 he received his doctorate in Zurich as a doctor of chemistry. 1938 Kogerman was inducted into the newly formed Estonian Academy of Sciences.

In 1925, Kogermann together with the Estonian chemist Michael Wittlich ( 1866-1933 ), a laboratory for the exploration of oil shale, which won an international reputation. In 1941 he became director of the laboratory. From 1936 to 1941 Kogerman was at Tallinn University of Technology ( TTÜ ) and active from 1936 to 1939 its rector. From October 1939 to the Soviet occupation of Estonia on 21 June 1940 Kogerman Education Ministers of the Republic of Estonia.

The Soviet authorities deported Kogerman 1941 together with his family. Until 1945 he was a prisoner in a prison camp in Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Russian interior. Then he was allowed to return in the Estonian SSR.

1946 Kogerman was inducted into the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1945 to 1951 he was Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry and pyrogenic processes of the Polytechnical Institute of Tallinn. From 1947 to 1950 he held the rank of director of the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences.

Oil shale

Paul Kogerman has become internationally known for his work on oil shale. He produced fundamental work on the structure and origin of the oil shale, its chemical properties and to the thermal decay processes. As the only indigenous energy resource in Estonia importance of oil shale played a special strategic role for the Republic of Estonia before the war and later for energy production within the Soviet Union.