Ian Voldemarovich Peive

Born July 21 (Aug. 3), 1906, in the village of Sementsevo, in what is now Toropets Raion, Kalinin Oblast. Soviet agrochemist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR (1946). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1940.

Peive graduated in 1929 from the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy. From 1931 to 1944 he worked at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Flax, where he served as director from 1942 to 1944. Peive was rector of the Latvian Agricultural Academy from 1944 to 1950 and president of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR from 1951 to 1959. In 1963 he became head of the laboratory of trace-element biochemistry at the K. A. Timiriazev Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1971 he was appointed academician-secretary of the department of general biology at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Peive’s main works are devoted to the chemistry and biochemistry of potassium, aluminum, and trace elements, including boron, copper, and molybdenum. He received the Lenin Prize in 1964 for his work on trace elements.

Peive was elected a candidate-member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Twenty-second Congress of the CPSU and a member of the Central Committee at the Twenty-third Congress. He was a deputy to the fourth through seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at the fifth and sixth convocations. Peive has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, five other orders, and several medals.