Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin

Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (Russian: Александр Иванович Опарин) was a Soviet biochemist notable for his theories about the origin of life and for his book The Origin of Life. He also studied the biochemistry of material processing by plants and enzyme reactions in plant cells. He showed that many food production processes were based on biocatalysis and developed the foundations for industrial biochemistry in the USSR. Oparin graduated from the Moscow State University in 1917 and became a professor of biochemistry there in 1927. Many of his early papers were about plant enzymes and their role in metabolism. In 1924 he put forward a hypothesis suggesting that life on Earth developed through a gradual chemical evolution of carbon-based molecules in the Earth's primordial soup. In 1935, along with academician Aleksei Bach, he founded the Biochemistry Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1939, Oparin became a Corresponding Member of the Academy, and, in 1946, a full member. In 1937, he organized the Department of Technical Biochemistry at the Moscow Technological Institute of Food Industry. From 1942-60, Oparin headed the Department of Plant Biochemistry at Moscow State University, where he gave lectures on general biochemistry, technical biochemistry, and special courses on enzymology and the problem of the origin of life. In 1970, he was elected President of the Inter…