CHAU2153 This is a vintage 8" x 6" hand signed letter for Ivan Nikolov Stranski who was a Bulgarian physical chemist who is considered the father of crystal growth research. Please see below for full details of his wartime life and career.
This personally autographed letter is on his official headed paper. Whilst I cant translate its contents it is mint condition (centrally folded once where posted otherwise absolutely pristine) and you will never get a better autograph opportunity for this historic chemist than on his official headed paper from his Berlin offices from circa fifty years ago.
In 1935–1936 Stranski was head of department at the Ural Institute of Physics and Mechanics in Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union. In 1941, Stranski was invited by Walther Kossel to conduct research in the Technical University of Breslau. He put forth his kinetic theory of crystal growth, which became known as the Kossel–Stranski model—Kossel independently proposed the same model.
With the advance of the Red Army, Stranski returned to Berlin to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. As Nazi Germany surrendered, Volmer was taken by force to the Soviet Union and Stranski took his place as the director of studies at the Technical University of Berlin's Department of Physical Chemistry. Despite the heavy damage caused by Allied bombing, not without Stranski's assistance the Technical University was among the few that opened for the 1945 academic year. In 1948–1949, Stranski was the dean of the Faculty of General and Engineering Sciences. In 1951–1953, Stranski was rector of the university;he had also previously held the position of vice rector. In 1953, he became deputy director of the Fritz Haber Institute. Until 1963, Stranski taught at the Free University of Berlin.
After the Bulgarian coup d'état of 1944 and the installment of a communist government, Stranski was accused of links to the preceding pro-fascist régime and removed from the department that he established. It was not until the 1960s that he was re-accepted as a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and he would only return to Bulgaria from West Berlin in 1967. He died in Sofia in 1979, but was buried in Berlin.
