Kizel, Aleksandr

Born Mar. 6 (18), 1882, in Moscow; died 1948. Soviet biochemist.

Kizel’ graduated from Moscow University in 1904. Between 1905 and 1911 he worked in Zürich, Heidelberg, Göttingen, and Paris. From 1912 to 1918 he was a docent at Moscow University, and from 1918 to 1922 a professor at the University of Saratov. From 1922 to 1930 he was director of a laboratory at the K. A. Timiriazev Institute of Biology in Moscow. Kizel’ was the organizer (1930) and first head of the subdepartment of plant biochemistry at Moscow State University. His works were devoted to the distribution and enzyme transformations of arginine and urea in plants; to the detection and transformations of mannitol, various polysaccharides, polyuronides, and quinic acid in plants; and to nonprotein nitrogen compounds, proteins, and nucleo-proteins in plants. He also wrote a number of works on the biochemistry of grain.