Boris Vladimirovich Derjaguin (or Deryagin; ) (9 August 1902 in Moscow – 16 May 1994) was a Soviet and Russian chemist. He laid the foundation of the modern interface and colloid science. He was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Derjaguin became famous in scientific circles for his work on the stability of colloids and thin films of liquids which is now known as the DLVO theory, after the initials of its authors: Derjaguin, Lev Landau, Evert Verwey, and Theodoor Overbeek. It is universally included in text books on colloid chemistry and is still widely applied in modern studies of interparticle forces in colloids. In particular, the Derjaguin approximation is widely used in order to approximate the interaction between curved surfaces from a knowledge of the interaction for planar ones.
Derjaguin was also briefly involved in polywater research during the 1960s and early 1970s. This field claimed that if water was heated then cooled in quartz capillaries, it took on astonishing new properties. Eventually, the scientists who were involved in polywater admitted it did not exist, claiming they were misled by poorly designed experiments (Derjaguin rejected polywater in 1973).
He is also known for having hotly rejectedD. Maugis, Contact, Adhesion and Rupture of Elastic Solids, Springer-Verlag, Solid-State Sciences, Berlin 2000, some of the then-new ideas of adhesion as presented by the Western blocB. V. Derjaguin, V. M. Muller and Y. P. Toporov, "Effect of contact deformations on the adhesion of particles", J. Colloid Interface Sci. 53 (1975), pp. 314-325 in the 1970s. His model came to be known as the DMT model (after Derjaguin, Vladimir M. Muller and Yu P. Toporov), while the model presented by Western bloc scientists came to be known as the JKR model (after Kenneth L. Johnson, Kevin Kendall and Alan D. Roberts)K. L. Johnson, K. Kendall and A. D. Roberts, "Surface energy and the contact of elastic solids", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 324 (1971), pp. 301-313 for adhesive elastic contact. This rejection proved to be instrumental in the development of the David TaborD. Tabor, "The hardness of solids", Rev. Phys. Technol. 1 (1970), pp. 145-179D. Tabor, "Surface forces and surface interactions", J. Colloid Interface Sci. 58 (1977), pp. 2-13 and later Daniel MaugisD. Maugis, "Adhesion of spheres: The JKR-DMT transition using a Dugdale model", J. Colloid Interface Sci. 150 (1992), pp. 243-269 parameters that quantify which contact model (of the JKR and DMT models) represent adhesive contact better for specific materials.
In 1935, Derjaguin founded the Laboratory of Thin Layers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Moscow. He was the head of the laboratory until 1988, when the age limit for directors of research divisions was introduced. He was replaced by Vladimir Muller as the head of the laboratory.
Selected works
From 1980 onwards
Reprints
See also Lifshitz theory of van der Waals force
References