Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin was a Russian organic chemist.

He studied at the University of Kazan where he graduated in mathematics but he started teaching chemistry in 1835.
Then he studied with Justus Liebig in Giessen, where he finished his research on the benzoin condensation, which was discovered by Liebig several years before.
In 1847 he left Kazan for the University of Saint Petersburg where he also became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
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.
In 1842 Zinin played an important role in identifying aniline.