 He became Professor for Chemistry in the same year at the University of Kazan and left for the University of Saint Petersburg in 1847 where he also became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and first president of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society (1868–1877).In St. Petersburg, professor Zinin was a private teacher of chemistry to the young Alfred Nobel.He is known for the so-called Zinin reaction or Zinin reduction, in which nitro aromates like nitrobenzene are converted to amines by reduction with ammonium sulfides.