Irina Beletskaia

Born Sept. 10, 1933, in Leningrad. Soviet organic chemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1974).

Beletskaia graduated from Moscow State University in 1955. In the same year she joined the staff of the university, and in 1971 she became a professor there. Her principal works deal with the mechanisms of organic reactions. Beletskaia has investigated the mechanism of electrophilic substitution in organometallic compounds and has studied the chemistry of carbanions.