The main sphere of scientific interests is organic crystal chemistry. The author of the method of potential functions symmetry, which for the first time made it possible to interpret the general picture of the structure of molecular crystals; a special series of studies is dedicated to the phenomena of hypersymmetry and contact conformery.
Introduced the concept of structural class, which became the basis for systematization of organic crystal structures; made more accurate and developed the theory of close packing of molecules in crystals. Pays significant attention to the history and methodology of chemistry, history of X-ray structural analysis and crystal chemistry, methodology of structural studies. Recently a series of works on studying the dependence of bioactivity of chemical compounds (including drugs) on the structure of molecules and crystals was started.
Lecture courses: a general
course of crystal chemistry, a
course of the history and methodology of chemistry for students of the Chemistry Department and the Department of Materials Science of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, Higher Chemical College of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Twelve Ph.D. theses and one doctoral thesis were defended under P.M.Zorky's supervision.
Publications: about 300 works, including 7 books.
