Nikolai Tikhomirov

Early years

After graduating from the lyceum, he studied at the chemical department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University. After graduation, he worked in the technical laboratory of the Imperial Moscow University and at Kiev University in the laboratory of Professor Nikolai Bunge, who gave popular lectures on the production of "nutritional and flavoring substances".

From the mid-1880s, he worked in various fields of industry, first as an assistant to the director of the Association of the Babkin Brothers Kupavinskaya cloth factory in the Bogorodsky Uyezd of Moscow Governorate. Based on the experience gained, he wrote a three-volume educational work. In 1886, the Moscow printing house of L. F. Snegirev printed the first volume of "Technology of woolen production in the VI parts with a separate large atlas of machines and apparatus", the 2nd volume "Finishing the cloth" and the 3rd volume "Artificial wool and wool carbonization. The Babkin brothers, having learned about this, regarded the publication of books as a direct threat to their production, fired their assistant and banned the publication of these books.

Tikhomirov left for Ukraine, where he worked first as an intern, and then as chief chemist and director of sugar distilleries of the two largest sugar beet and refining corporations of the Russian Empire - the Tereshchenko Brothers Partnership and the Brodsky Alexander Partnership. In 1893 he published the book "Analysis of sugary substances. A Practical Guide to the Chemical Investigation of Materials and Products of Beet Sugar Production” and “Reference Book and Guide to Beet Sugar Production”.In addition, he received patents for his own inventions: for new methods of sugar production; on marching mobile centers for the army; on a device that uses the heat of flue gases to heat and purify water with the associated destruction of smoke. Tikhomirov also invented filters with automatic washing of the filter material for sugar, distilleries, oil mills and other plants. The filters have been widely used at home and abroad.