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.
Activities and affiliations
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)
Developing the origin-of-life hypothesis and building international debate
At a meeting of the Russian Botanical Society in the spring of 1922, Oparin proposed that the first organisms arose in an environment rich in already formed organic compounds. He argued that early life was heterotrophic, using available organic matter rather than making its own food as plants do, and that life was an organized system exchanging matter and energy, not something explained by the properties of individual molecules alone. He developed this account in his 1924 book, The Origin of Life. In it, chemical changes in simple substances in the reducing atmosphere of the early Earth, driven by energy sources, produced increasingly complex organic compounds that could lead to primitive life.
To examine the hypothesis experimentally, Oparin studied coacervate droplets as models of early cells. He found that enzymes in droplets made from substances such as gelatin and gum arabic functioned more efficiently than in ordinary aqueous solution. The droplets were not themselves living organisms, but made it possible to investigate how compartments affect metabolic reactions. When other researchers offered experimental accounts of the formation of complex molecules and the budding and growth of droplets, Oparin acknowledged their findings. In 1957 he organized an international conference on the origin of life in Moscow, attended by representatives from 16 countries; further conferences followed in 1963 and 1970. In 1970 he was elected the first president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, fostering international exchange among researchers.