Research
His research at Kazan was primarily concerned with the development of organozinc chemistry and the synthesis of alcohols. The first of these reactions had been reported by Butlerov in 1863, who prepared tert-butyl alcohol from dimethylzinc and phosgene. Zaitsev and his students Egor Egorevich Vagner (Georg Wagner, 1849–1903) and Sergei Nikolaevich Reformatskii (1860–1934) extended this reaction to a general synthesis of alcohols using alkylzinc iodides. This synthesis was the best way to make alcohols until the advent of the Grignard reaction in 1901. Reformatskii's work, which used the zinc compounds from alpha-bromoesters, led to the discovery of a synthetic reaction (the Reformatskii reaction) that is still used today. Zaitsev's Rule was reported in 1875, and appeared just as his arch-nemesis, Markovnikov, (who had made a prediction which the rule contradicts) was taking the Chair at Moscow University. Zaitsev received several honors: he was elected as a Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Science, an honorary member of Kiev University, and he served two terms as President of the Russian Physical-Chemical Society.
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