Alexander Alexandrovich Baev

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bayev (December 28, 1903, Chita - December 31, 1994, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian biochemist, doctor, scientist. The main works are devoted to biotechnology, genetics and molecular biology.
The first in the Soviet Union and one of the first in the world carried out structural and functional study of nucleic acids (RNA and DNA). He participated in the allocation and research of the human growth hormone. He was the author and head of the research program for the study of human genome. 
Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1969), Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1970), Hero of Socialist Labor (1981), Academician of SROHN (1985), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1991). He was an honorary member of 7 foreign academies. About 900 scientific works were published, including 17 books and brochures. It has 22 copyright certificates and 1 foreign patent for inventions. A number of works were published outside of Russia.
He was subjected to Stalin repressions, spent 17 years in camps. Member of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) since 1964.
==Biography==
===Young years===
Born on January 10, 1904 (December 28, 1903 according to the old style) in Chita. Father - Alexander Alexandrovich Baev (1873-1914), lawyer. Mother - Manepha Alexandrovna Baeva (nee Nikolaeva) (1879-1938). In 1912.Film "Alexander Baev" from the series "Geniuses and Villains of the Past Era" (according to other sources - in 1914), in connection with his father’s death, he moved to Kazan, where he lived in the family of his grandfather, the owner of a small shipyard and shipbuilding plant. During the revolution, the grandfather's family lost all the money, and therefore A. Baev was forced to go to work since 1918.He sold cigarettes and then engaged in the statistics of crimes in the Kazan criminal wanted list.
In 1921, Alexander Baev graduated from high school. He wanted to enter the medical faculty of Kazan University but was not accepted due to non-proletarian origin. He entered the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Kazan University, and a year later he was able to transfer to the medical faculty. In 1923, he was expelled again due to origin and then restored. Despite this, Baev successfully graduated from the university in 1927. After graduating from the university, in 1927-1930 he was engaged in medical practice in the village, near Kazan. In 1930 he entered graduate school at the Department of Biochemistry of the Kazan Medical Institute. He began scientific activities under the leadership of the professor of the Department of Biochemistry Vladimir Engelhardt. In 1932 he received the position of assistant at the Department of Biochemistry.
He was supposedly married to the daughter of the Kazan bacteriologist S. T. Velhover-Tatyana Sergeyevna Velhover, but soon divorced. From the marriage he had the son Alexander. The very fact of marriage and the presence of the son is mentioned in the memoirs of the second wife of E.V. Baeva.
In 1935, after Engelhardt, he moved to Moscow with his mother to continue working in his laboratory at the Institute of Biochemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was engaged in the biochemistry of respiratory processes and transformations of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in a cell. The dissertation work was devoted to a direct analysis of ATP transformations by the enzymatic method by means of Schmidt adenylate deaminase. In the spring of 1937, the dissertation was completed but was never defenced.
===The first imprisonment===
On April 30, 1937, Baev was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activity as part of the underground organization of “young Bukhariners”, supposedly intended to kill Stalin and restore capitalism in the country. In autobiography, Baev suggests that the cause of the charges was the preparing trial of Nikolai Bukharin, which took place in 1938 and ended with his execution. For two months, Baev was kept in Butyrskaya prison. Then he was sent to the investigation to Kazan, where he stoically transferred all the interrogations and was able not to slander anyone. On September 19, 1937, in the Lefortovo prison by the decision of the ATC, he was sentenced under Art.17, 58-8 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR "To imprisonment for a period of 10 years with the defeat of political rights for 5 years. After about two weeks in Butyrskaya prison and a month in Vladimir - at the stage he was sent to the Solovetsky special purpose camp. He spent 10 months in a common cell on the island of Bolshaya Muksoolm, then he was placed in a prison cell in the Solovetsky Kremlin.
To facilitate the spiritual component of prison existence, Alexander Baev decides to actively engage in mental activity. For classes, he chooses calculus and reading of literature in French, German and English. In the same cell with Baev was Alexander Yakovlevich Weber, the People's Commissar of the Education of the Republic of the Germans of the Volga region, with whom Alexander practiced German language.
In the summer of 1939, Baev, as well as other prisoners of the Solovetskaya prison, began to drive to work that lasted several weeks. The scientist worked in the cemetery (excavating the graves of monks), or on the beach (cleaning of boulders-preparation of the take-off and landing strip).
In June 1939, during the liquidation of the Solovetskaya prison, he was transferred to the Dudinka by sea, from there by rail to Norilsk. He worked in the camp ambulatory, then since August 1939 by the doctor of the city hospital, served civilians. He governed the therapeutic, children's and infectious departments. In 1940-1947 – he was the camp doctor, then the doctor of the hospital of the Norilsk Metallurgical Plant.
===Between arrests===
In 1944 he married the widow of Ekaterina Vladimirovna Kosyakina (borned with surname Yankovskaya). In Norilsk, they had two children. On April 30, 1944 he was released early for work during the war without the right to leave Norilsk.
After liberation, Alexander Alexandrovich decides to return to science. Thanks to the help of Vladimir Engelhardt, who retained the text of the candidate dissertation of Baev, he completed work on her. In 1945-1946, Engelhardt and academician Leon Orbeli petitioned for the return of Alexander Bayev to Moscow, but received a refusal, were able to achieve only permission to come for one month to process the dissertation. In June 1946 (according to other sources in the summer of 1947), he received permission to travel to Leningrad, where he defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate of biological sciences at the Institute of Physiology by Leon Orbeli.
In 1947 he received permission to move from Norilsk, but cities such as Moscow and Leningrad still remained closed for him. As a result, he and his family are moving to Syktyvkar. He works as the head of the laboratory of biochemistry of the Komi branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
===Second arrest===
On February 28, 1949, Baev is arrested again, on old charges. On May 25, a resolution of a special meeting under the MGB of the USSR is sentenced to eternal link in Siberia. He was serving a link (1949-1954) in the village of Nizhnehadrino, the Yartsevsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he was in charge of a rural hospital.
In the fall of 1949, Baev’s wife and her children arrived in Nizhnehadrino, and she got a laboratory assistant to the hospital laboratory. During the link, Alexander Baev was in constant correspondence with Engelhardt.
===Scientific activity===
The scientific activity of A. Bayev can be divided into five overlapping periods: 1930-1937 - cyclic transformations of ATP during cell breathing; 1960-1969 - the primary structure of transport RNA and “Cutted molecules”; since 1969 - recombinant DNA; since 1972 - biotechnology; since 1987 - the genome of human.
In 1954, Alexander Baev was released and returned to Moscow, but he was completely rehabilitated only on September 11, 1957. In 1954-1959, he worked as a senior researcher at the Institute of Biochemistry named after A. N. Bach (Academy of Sciences of the USSR). Returning to the laboratory of Engelhardt in the late 1950s, Baev continued to work on the development of bioenergetic concepts. First of all, Baev completed the experiments with ATP resynthesis in the red blood cells of the dove, which were not completed in 1937, namely, it was identified by ATP decay products when turning off breathing and resynthesis in aerobic conditions. This ended the first stage of the scientist's scientific activity.
In 1959, the Baev study direction changed radically: cell nucleotides fell into his sphere of interests. In 1959, Engelhardt organized the Institute of Radiation Physical and Chemical Biology (now the Institute of Molecular Biology named after V. A. Engelhardt of the Russian Academy of Sciences), where Baev received the post of senior researcher, then became the head of the laboratory, then the department (genetic engineering), and an adviser. He worked there until 1994.
In 1964, Baev joined the CPSU, which explained for himself the desire for certain freedom and the ability to live and work in accordance with his ideas.
In the institute, Baev was headed by a group of young researchers, which included Tatyana Venkstern, Andrey Mirzabekov, R. I. Tatarskaya, V. D. Axelrod, Nina Mikhailovna Abrosimova-Amelianchik, A. I. Krutilina and L. Lee, who took up the problem of the structure of nucleic acids. Baev hoped to come to an understanding of the functional properties of biopolymers through their structures and believed that the best object of research could be rRNA. In 1967, he achieved significant success, deciphering the primary structure of Valine tRNA 1. For these studies, Baev and his employees in 1969 were awarded the USSR State Prize - the first prize in the field of molecular biology. Subsequently, this group of scientists determined the primary structure of tRNA 2 and 3. After that, the work was reduced, since the main assumption was not justified - it was not possible to find connections between the tRNA structure and its functionality.
In 1967, Alexander Baev became a doctor of biological sciences, and in 1970 - the academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1976-1979 he was the president of the International Biochemical Union, and since 1988 he was the chairman of the Scientific Council of the “Human Gene” program.
After that, Baev was engaged in the development of the method of studying the functional topology of the tRNA (“method of cut molecules”: study the functional properties of halves, quarters and other fragments of the tRNA). The experiments showed that in the solution there is a self-assembly of fragments of a valine tRNA 1 and a partial restoration of its ability to interact with aminoacyl tRNA synthetase. Other functions were investigated - interaction with ribosomes, methylation, as well as the secondary structure of aggregated molecules. The work was discontinued for the same reasons as the analysis of the primary structure of the tRNA.
Later, Baev began to develop a new direction of work in the USSR - structural studies of DNA, contributed to the creation of biotechnological industry.
In the 1980s the scientist turned to the new region of studying the structure and function of the human genome at that time. To organize research in this area, Baev created and headed the Special Scientific Council on the problems of the human genome. And until the end of his days he patronized domestic works in this direction, sought their state support.
===Recent years===
In 1971-1980 he was the professor at the Biological Faculty of Moscow State University in Pushchino.
In 1981, Baev was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
Alexander Alexandrovich Baev died on December 31, 1994.
He was buried in Moscow at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
==Family==
* The first wife - Tatyana Sergeevna Velhover, are divorced.
The son is Alexander.
* Second wife (since 1944) - Ekaterina Vladimirovna Baeva (nee Yankovskaya, in the first marriage was Kosyakina) (1915-2004)
Son – Alexey. The daughter is Tatyana - a human rights activist, in 1968 she participated in a demonstration against the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia
==Awards and titles==
* Editor-in-chief of the magazine "Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR" (1972-1990)
* Member of the International Society for the Origin of Life (1970), the European Molecular Biological Organization (EMBO, 1976).
* President of the International Biochemical Union (1976). Member of many other international scientific societies and editors of scientific journals.
* Honorary Doctor of Greifswald University named after E. M. Arndt (GDR, 1975).
* Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1976), the Polish Academy of Sciences (1977), a full member of the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldin" (1973), a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (1974) and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1986).
* President of the International Biochemical Union (1976-1978).
* Member of the American Biochemical Society (1977).
* Hero of Socialist Labor (1981). He was awarded the Orders of Lenin (1974, 1981), the October Revolution (1984), “Cyril and Methodius” of the 1st degree (Bulgaria, 1977).
* Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR on the problems of biotechnology (1981), the Scientific 
* Council "Human Gene" (1989).
* Academician of RAASKhN (from 1985; until 1992 - VASKHNIL).
* The laureate of the USSR State Prize (1969, the first scientist in the USSR, awarded this prize for work in the field of molecular biology), the USSR CM Prize (1981), the Demidov Prize (non -governmental scientific Demidovsky fund, the Russian Federation, 1994).
* He was awarded the gold medal “For Merit of Science and Humanity” (Czechoslovakia, 1977), the Gold Medal named after V.A. Engelhardt (RAS, 1994).
==Publications==
===Scientific works===
He published more than 700 scientific works in Soviet and foreign journals and publications, prepared many specialists in the field of molecular biology.
* An enzymatic analysis of the transformation of adenosine triphosphate acid into nuclear red blood cells due to breathing and glycolis (biochemistry. 1937. T. 2);
* “To the question of blood disease in the Far North” (article and report at the conference of doctors in the plant hospital), 1945;
* “Guide to Infant Nutrition” (published and read 15 minutes daily on the radio), 1945;
* “Electric phenomena in the atmosphere, in particular ions” (report for doctors according to meteorological data in Norilsk and Lama), 1945;
* “On the medical selection of personnel for working in the Far North in connection with the climatic factor” (together with Dr. Z. I. Rosenblum), 1945
* "Radiation resources of Norilsk" (report at the conference of doctors), 1946;
* The primary structure of the valine transport RNA-1 of the Baker's yeast (molecular biology. 1967. T. 1, issue 5, in co-author);
* The functional properties of fragments of the molecule of the valine transport RNA (ibid., Issue 6).
* The absorption spectra of the minor components and some oligonucleotides of ribonucleic acids / soybean.T.V. Venkster. -The 2nd re-ruble.and extension.ed.- M.: Science, 1967. - 79 p.
* Biotechnology - the Union of Science and Production / Savor.V.A. Bykov. - M.: Sov.Russia, 1987. - 125 p.
* The mysterious language of heredity. - M.: Scientific.Council state. Scientific-techno. Progr."Man of Man", 1993. - 16 p.
* “Human genome”: some ethical and legal problems of the present and future // Man.1995. No. 2. S. 6-13.
==Literature on the works and life of A. A. Baev==
* Lit.: On the 80th anniversary of Alexander Alexandrovich Baeva // Molecular Biology.- 1984. T. 18. - Issue.1. - S. 5-7;
* Alexander Alexandrovich Baev - 90 years! // Molecular Biology.- 1994. T. 28. - Issue.1. - S. 5-6;
* Academician Alexander Alexandrovich Baev: Essays. Correspondence. Memories.- M.: Science, 1997.
===Other===
Academician A. A. Baev. The current successes are amazing // Komsomolskaya Pravda.- 1975. - November 22.- S. 4.
==Literature==
* Academician Alexander Alexandrovich Baev: Essays. Correspondence. Memories.- M .: Science, 1998. - 520 p.: Portr., Il.- (series "Scientists of Russia: essays, memories, materials").
* A.A. Baev (1904-1994): Biobibliographic. M., 1998;
* Zvyagintsev V. Tribunal for academicians. M., 2009
==Links==
* Alexander Alexandrovich Baev (Russian). The site "Heroes of the country".
* Profile Alexander Alexandrovich Baev on the official website of the Russian Academy of Sciences
* Baev, Alexander Aleksandrovich - article from the Biographical Encyclopedia of Republican
* Biography based on memories
* Biography of A.A. Baev on the website of the RAS
* Biographical Encyclopedia Biography.ru
* Historical certificate on the website of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences
* Memories of the wife of A. A. Baev
* "Memories of the Gulag and their authors"
Category:1903 births
Category:1994 deaths
Category:Soviet biochemists
Category:Doctors
Category:Scientists