Soviet biochemist who traced life's origin to a primordial soup
"There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter." — 1922, in an early paper that would grow into The Origin of Life.
A Soviet biochemist and science administrator who laid the institutional foundations of Soviet biochemistry. In 1924 he proposed the 'primordial soup' hypothesis (that life on Earth arose through the chemical evolution of abiotic matter), opening a new paradigm in origin-of-life research that later culminated in the Miller–Urey experiment. In 1935 he co-founded the Biochemistry Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences with Aleksei Bach, and from 1946 served as its director for 34 years, making it the central axis of Soviet biochemistry. As the first president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) in 1970, he helped institutionalize the field globally, yet his support for the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko and Olga Lepeshinskaya etched the tension between science and politics into his own career.
Career Timeline
- 1917Graduated Natural Sciences Division, Physics & Mathematics Faculty, Moscow State University
- 1925–1942Lecturer and Professor of Biochemistry, Moscow State University
- 1935Co-founded the Biochemistry Institute, USSR Academy of Sciences, with A. N. Bach
- 1935–1946Deputy Director, Bach Institute of Biochemistry
- 1939Corresponding Member, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1942–1960Head, Department of Plant Biochemistry, Moscow State University
- 1946Full Member (Academician), USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1946–1980Director, Bach Institute of Biochemistry
- 1948–1955Academician-Secretary, Biology Division, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1951–1958Chairman, All-Union Znanie Society
- 1970–1977First President, International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL)