Belozerskii, Andrei Nikolaevich

Born Aug. 16 (29), 1905, in Tashkent; died Dec. 31, 1972, in Moscow. Soviet plant biochemist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962; corresponding member 1958). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969).

In 1927, Belozerskii graduated from Central Asian University in Tashkent. From 1930 he worked at Moscow State University (from 1946 as a professor; from 1960 as chairman of a subdepartment) and simultaneously from 1946 at the Biochemistry Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1965 he organized a subdepartment of virology at Moscow State University and an interdepartmental laboratory of bioorganic chemistry. Belozerskii’s principal work was done on the chemistry and biochemistry of proteins, mainly nucleic acids. He established the universal presence of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) in higher and lower plants, traced the principles of changes in nucleic acids in the ontogeny of plants, and demonstrated the species specificity of DNA in bacteria. In 1957, Belozerskii, in collaboration with A. S. Spirin, predicted the necessary existence of informational RNA; he was the first to discover nonalkaline proteins in nuclear nucleoproteins. He studied the histones of higher plants. A number of his works are on the processes of formation and decomposition and the physiological role of polyphosphates in fungi. Belozerskii was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.