Aleksandr and Boris Arbuzov House-Museum

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Aleksandr and Boris Arbuzov House-Museum (Russian: - . . . . ) is a Russian State (departmental) Memorial Museum attached to the A. E. Arbuzov Institute of Organic and Physical Chemistry of the Kazan Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). It is located in the city of Kazan (Republic of Tatarstan). It specialises in the daily life and scientific activities of outstanding Soviet chemists: academicians Aleksandr Ermingeldovich and Boris Alexandrovich Arbuzovs. Local historians date the construction of the wooden mansion to 1913. The building was an urban mansion in the style of Russian eclecticism or Art Nouveau. It has never been rebuilt, so the architectural details, the interior layout and the finishing of the rooms have been preserved. The mansion originally belonged to Maria Alexeeva, the niece of the painter Ivan Shishkin. Alexandr Arbuzov moved to this address with his wife and three children in 1916 and lived here until his death in 1968. The house was not owned by the academician: he rented it until the October Revolution, and after nationalisation it became state property. By the decision of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR of 28 March 1969 the Memorial Museum of Aleksandr Arbuzov was organised here. It was opened on 22 September 1971. On 18 September 2001 (on the tenth anniversary of Boris Arbuzov's death) the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences renamed the museum the Arbuzov House Museum. The exposition of the museum is divided into two sections. The first —historical and biographical— reflects the events of the life, scientific, public and state activity of the academician Arbuzov. The second part —memorial and domestic— includes the living room, the dining room, the bedroom, the office of Boris Arbuzov, the kitchen, the summer porch, which preserves the interiors from the time when the Arbuzov family lived here, and the garden, where Aleksandr Arbuzov used to work. Academician Aleksandr Yerminingeldovich Arbuzov settled on Katanovsky Lane with his wife and three children in 1916 and lived there until the end of his life (1968). The authors of the booklet Academician A. E. Arbuzov in Kazan tells that it was, because the academician was a patriarchal and somewhat conservative man. During this period, the apartment was visited by many outstanding scientists and chemists of the time: Nikolay Zelinsky, Alexey Favorsky, Sergey Reformatsky, Alexei Chichibabin, Vyacheslav Tishchenko, Nikolai Kurnakov and others. By 1916 Aleksandr Arbuzov was already widely recognised as an important chemical scientist. In 1910, he travelled to Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy to study the state of research in organic chemistry in those countries. In 1911, Arbuzov won an all-Russian competition for the position of Professor Extraordinary at the Imperial Kazan University and from then on became Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry. In 1915 he presented his doctoral thesis On the phenomena of catalysis in the field of transformations of some phosphorus compounds and was confirmed as an ordinariate professor of that university. The house in Katanovsky Lane did not belong to him: he rented it until the October Revolution, and after nationalisation the house became state property.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.