Shores Alexandrovich Medvedev

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Shores Alexandrowitsch Medvedev ( Russian Жорес Александрович Медведев ; born November 14, 1925 in Tbilisi , Georgian SSR , Soviet Union ; † November 15, 2018 in London ) was a Russian biochemist , historian and Soviet dissident .

Life

From 1926 to 1938 Medvedev lived with his parents and twin brother Roi Alexandrovich Medvedev in Leningrad (his unusual first name is derived from Jean Jaurès ). The father Alexander Romanowitsch Medvedev, a professor at the Military Political Academy , was arrested in the course of the Stalinist purges in 1938 and died in prison in 1941. After his arrest and conviction in a show trial in the same year, Medvedev moved to Rostov-on-Don with his mother and twin brother . In September 1941, shortly before the first German occupation of the city, the family was evacuated to Tbilisi. In February 1943 he was drafted into the Red Army and went to the front after brief training as an infantryman . He was wounded in fighting near the Taman Peninsula and was later released from the army. From 1944 he studied at the Moscow Timirjasew Agricultural Academy and completed his studies in December 1950 with a doctoral thesis on sexual processes in plants. From 1954 to 1963 he worked in the academy as a scientist.

As early as 1952, Medvedev researched the problems of aging and concentrated on the turnover of proteins and nucleic acids . In 1961 he published the first study in which he suggested that aging is the result of an accumulation of errors in the synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids. In 1962 he wrote the manuscript for his book on the history of Soviet genetic research (later published in the USA as "The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko " , Columbia Univ. Press, 1969). In 1963 he became head of the Laboratory for Molecular Radiation Biology at the Institute of Medical Radiology in Obninsk . He published two more books in 1963, “Protein Biosynthesis and Problems of Development and Inheritance in Aging” (1963) and “Molecular Mechanisms of Development” (1966). In 1969, after the publication of his book "The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko" in the USA , Medvedev was relieved of his positions.

Medvedev was expatriated from the Soviet Union in 1973 . During a trip to London with his wife Margarita and their younger son Dmitri, his Soviet citizenship was revoked and his passport was confiscated by the Soviet consulate. He has since lived in London, where he worked as a scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research until his retirement .

Medvedev died in November 2018, the day after his 93rd birthday.

Publication of the Kyshtym accident

In 1976 Medvedev attracted worldwide attention when he reported on the Kyshtym accident of September 29, 1957 on the site of the then-secret Mayak nuclear facility east of the Urals . Medvedev, based on his own research, which he published in the New Scientist magazine and in his book "Nuclear Disaster in the Urals" in 1979 , came to the conclusion that a nuclear explosion had occurred near Kyshtym in 1957 . At the time, however, these descriptions were not classified as credible. Only later did the timing turn out to be absolutely correct, as did the fact of a nuclear catastrophe, which, however, had "only" been triggered by a chemical explosion. The accident was only officially and publicly confirmed in the context of the glasnost and perestroika policy under Mikhail Gorbachev in June 1989 at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR by the then Deputy Prime Minister Lev Ryabev .

Honors

Publications (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Environmental disaster: Much worse than Chernobyl - News Science - DIE WELT .
  2. ↑ Much worse than Chernobyl in Welt Online on September 28, 2007, accessed on Sep 13. 2010
  3. ↑ Background of a long-hidden nuclear disaster Report in the science magazine Spektrumdirekt from September 28, 2007, accessed on September 13. 2010
  4. ↑ Drama in the secret atomic city in Welt-Online on September 30, 2007, accessed on Sep 13. 2010
  5. ↑ Background information: 50 years of radiation accident at Kysthym (sic!)
personal data
SURNAME Medvedev, Shores Alexandrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Медведев, Жорес Александрович (Russian); Medvedev, Zhores Alexandrovich (English transcription); Medvedev, Žores Aleksandrovič (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian biologist, historian and dissident
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Tbilisi , Georgian SSR , Soviet Union
DATE OF DEATH 15th November 2018
Place of death London , UK