He was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences, Derjaguin became famous in scientific circles for his work on the stability of colloids and thin films of liquids which is now known as the DLVO theory, after the initials of its authors: Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek.
This field claimed that if water was heated then cooled in quartz capillaries, it took on astonishing new properties.
He is also known for having hotly rejected[2] some of the then-new ideas of adhesion as presented by the Western bloc[3] in the 1970s.
In 1935, Derjaguin founded the Laboratory of Thin Layers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Moscow.
He was the head of the laboratory until 1988, when the age limit for directors of research divisions was introduced.