Balandin, Aleksei Aleksandrovich

Born Dec. 8 (20), 1898, in Leningrad; died May 22, 1967, in Moscow. Soviet chemist. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member, 1943). Member of the CPSU from 1949.

In 1923, Balandin graduated from Moscow University, where he began to work in 1927, becoming a professor in 1934. In 1935 he also became head of the laboratory of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; and in 1954, head of the N. D. Zelinskii Laboratory. Balandin’s field of work is organic catalysis. He formulated and developed the multiplet theory of catalysis, which established the existence of a correspondence in structure and energy between reacting molecules and solid catalysts. This theory was used by Balandin and his school in extensive research on the reactions of hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, dehydration, and so on. The author of more than 900 scientific articles and a series of monographs of great theoretical and practical significance, Balandin received the D. I. Mendeleev Prize (1936), the S. V. Lebedev Prize (1945), and the State Prize of the USSR (1946). He was awarded the Order of Lenin and two other orders.