Born: 23 October 1904, Russia
Died: 25 April 1995
Country most active: Russia
Also known as: Зинаида Васильевна Ершова
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
Zinaida Vasilyevna Yershova (1904- 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chemical engineer, who worked in both industry and academia developing methods for the production of radioactive materials for the Soviet atomic bomb project and the space programme. She headed a pilot factory for the manufacture of uranium ingots (1945), with a largely female workforce and at the National Institute for Inorganic Chemicals (NII9) worked on many other radioactive materials, including inventing a safer, ‘dry’ process for vacuum distillation of polonium from irradiated melted bismuth.