Vladimir Engelgardt

Vladimir Alexandrovich Engelhardt (Russian: Владимир Александрович Энгельгардт; born November 21, 1894 in Moscow, † July 10, 1984 ) was a Russian biochemist. He is considered the father of molecular biology in the Soviet Union.

Engelhardt was a member of the Baltic noble family Engelhardt, grew up the son of a country doctor in Yaroslavl and studied electrical engineering in St. Petersburg, then mathematics at the Moscow State University, moved there, but first the chemistry and then to medicine with a focus on biochemistry. After graduating in 1919 and two years of military service, he was back in 1921 at the University of Moscow, where he became a professor. From 1929 he taught at the University of Kazan as Head of the Biochemistry Department, then in Leningrad and finally again. At the Lomonosov University He was head of a laboratory at the Bach Institute of Biochemistry and at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology, before 1957 the director of a new institute was the Institute of Radiation and Physico- Chemical Biology and later named after him Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, which he directed until his death.

Engelhardt examined with his wife Militza Ljubimowa 1939 the myosin of muscle and found that it was able to cleave ATP and so received energy for muscle contraction. For this work he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1943.

He suggested independently from the mechanism of the Pasteur effect. Later on, he dealt with vitamins, their biological function, but also their industrial production.

In 1967 he received the Cothenius medal.

He was since 1953 a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in 1956 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.