Aleksandr Oparin | Notable Biographies

(1894/03/02 - 1980/04/12)

Alexander Ivanovich Oparin
Russian biochemist

He was born on March 2, 1894 in Uglich (Jaroslavl).
At age 10 he collected its first Herbarium and being in high school became acquainted with the Theory of evolution Charles Darwin through the publications of Professor Arkadyevitch Kliment Timiriazev.
In 1912 he entered the Imperial University of Moscow, where he studied plant physiology. In 1912, while he taught biochemistry and plant physiology at the Imperial University, presented a lecture to the Russian Botanical Society in which drove out his ideas on the origin of the first organisms; Thanks to the favorable reception to his ideas, he published in 1923 the origin of life.
In 1935 he organized together with Professor Bakh Biochemist Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which he directed until 1946. In 1936 he published a new book under the same name of The origin of life , which was translated into English in 1938.
The main contribution of Oparin to science is the explanation of the origin of life as the transition from simple proteins to aggregate organic functional affinity. In recent writings, he acknowledged some mistakes of his initial theory, a theory that, despite the time which has elapsed, retains its validity and relevance. Science arises from questions and internal discussion of problems and proposed that statements, many scientific disciplines have fed proposal of Oparin, and allowed that rigid structures in the subject of the study of the life is a thing of the past.
Aleksandr Oparin died on April 12, 1980, in Moscow.