She was a legendary figure in the Russian research community, and she was also known as Russian Madam Curie.
Zinaida Yershova graduated from Moscow State University in 1929. She was a pioneer researcher in the sphere of radium production in Russia. In 1937, she worked in Paris' Radium Institute in Marie Curie's laboratory.
From 1943, Yershova became part of the Soviet Union's "nuclear project" working over techniques to produce metal uranium, uranium specimens and products. The scholar made a considerable contribution to the development of the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb that was tested in August 1949 and ended the United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons.
The Russian Academy of Sciences said Yershova's experiments with polonium marked the start of developments in the sphere of isotope energy sources and the use of that kind of energy in Kosmos-type satellites and Lunokhod lunar rovers.
Yershova headed a team of scholars who developed tritium production techniques for a hydrogen bomb. This also made the basis for efforts to build the first development thermonuclear reactor in the Soviet Union. Those scholars' results are crucial for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a major project to get a safe energy source of the future.
Yershova worked with much energy until she was 85. She was awarded was Stalin Prize and two State Prizes. Zinaida Yershova died on April 25, 1995 at 90.
Television journalist Nikolai Svanidze who is married to Yershova's grand-daughter described, in an interview, her as a slim woman who wore high heel shoes even at home and also as a well-groomed and domineering woman. "She was very particular about clothes," reminiscences the journalist. "A family legend goes that clothes were selected for Yershova's trip to Paris. All her clothes had to be Soviet-made, while the scholar herself was to demonstrate the Soviet life stile. Among other clothes, she had a moleskin waistcoat that was made in Moscow and was very popular in Paris."
"Zinaida Vasilyevna regarded her radiochemistry, a science that was developing briskly at the time, as women's domain," said Svanidze. "This was probably because radiochemistry was founded as a science by Marie Curie, professor Yershova's only idol," said the journalist.
