Aleksandr Ye. Arbuzov (1877-1969) is an academician and founder of the Kazan school of phosphor-organic chemistry, one of the leading scientific centers of the world. A.Ye. Arbuzov was an erudite and all-round educated person. As a student he mastered glass-blowing and later on made all the apparatuses for his experiments himself. A number of glass laboratory devices and apparatuses, for example, the “Arbuzov retort” are produced by industrial enterprises. He was keen on music and played the violin, participating in amateur string quartets in Novo-Aleksandriya and Kazan. He has a gift of a painter and liked to make copies of pictures. As a connoisseur of architecture A. Arbuzov took active part in construction of new buildings for chemical institutions.

In 1900 Arbuzov graduated from the Kazan University and became its professor in 1911. During different periods of time he was a dean of the Mathematic-and-Physical Faculty of Kazan University and the Head of the Organic Chemistry Department of the Kazan Institute of Chemistry and Technology.

In his researches A. Ye. Arbuzov developed Butlerov’s theory of chemical structure mainly in phosphorous organic compounds. In 1905 he defined the chemical structure of phosphoric acid in his Master’s thesis titled “The Structure of the Phosphoric Acid and Its Derivatives”. Many foreign scientists of the XIX century failed to solve this problem. Arbuzov discovered the catalytic reaction of re-grouping ethers of the same acid, which was called the Arbuzov’s re-grouping or isomerisation, one of the most important methods of phosphor-organic compounds’ synthesis.

Arbuzov also developed the method of soft resin gathering without wastes of volatile components, thus, making a contribution to the growth of tapping agriculture of the USSR and gave the opportunity to study the composition of home-produced soft resin and turpentine.