How it began
Sergey Lebedev graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1900 and joined its faculty in 1902. In 1910, while researching the processes by which small molecules combine to form large ones, he produced an elastic rubber from butadiene. He was the first to research the polymerization of butadiene, work he carried out between 1910 and 1913, and his 1913 book on the polymerization of hydrocarbons became a standard reference for studies of synthetic rubber.
How it works
The process has two parts. Butadiene, a small hydrocarbon molecule, is first obtained from ethyl alcohol; between 1926 and 1928 Lebedev developed a single-stage method for making butadiene from ethanol. The butadiene is then polymerized, meaning its molecules are linked into long chains, using metallic sodium as a catalyst. Lebedev developed this industrial method in 1928. The early Soviet plants used ethanol from grain or potatoes as the feedstock.
How it spread
By 1940 the Soviet Union had the largest synthetic rubber industry in the world, producing more than 50,000 tons per year. During World War II Lebedev's process of obtaining butadiene from ethyl alcohol was used not only by the Soviet rubber industry but also by the German one.
What changed first
The Soviet Union lacked reliable access to natural rubber, which made the manufacture of a synthetic substitute important. Lebedev served as director of the Laboratory of Synthetic Rubber in Leningrad from 1928 to 1930, and his method became the base of the Soviet synthetic rubber industry. The first three synthetic rubber plants were launched in 1932 and 1933. The use of potato alcohol prompted jokes about a Russian method of making tires from potatoes.
What lasted
Polybutadiene is described as the first commercially viable and mass-produced type of synthetic rubber. Lebedev was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1931 for this work and became a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1932. He died in Leningrad in 1934, and in 1945 the national institute for synthetic rubber was named after him.
