Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov was a physical chemist and physicist who was the first Soviet citizen living in Russia to win the Nobel Prize. Semenov was born on April 16, 1896, in Saratov, Russia, to Nikolai Alex and Elena (Dmitrieva) Semenov. He graduated from Petrograd University (later renamed Leningrad; now called St. Petersburg, its original name) in 1917, the year of revolution that led to the establishment of Communism in Russia. Semenov had shown an interest in science from the time he entered Petrograd University at age sixteen in 1913 to study physics and mathematics. He published his first paper at the age of twenty on the subject of the collision of molecules and electrons. After graduation from Petrograd, Semenov accepted a post in physics at the Siberian University of Tomsk, but in 1920, he returned to Petrograd where he was associated with the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology for eleven years. In...