Boris Pavlovich Belousov (russian: Бори́с Па́влович Белоу́сов, link=no; 19 February 1893 – 12 June 1970) was a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...
and
biophysicist
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...
who discovered the
Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction
A Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, or BZ reaction, is one of a class of reactions that serve as a classical example of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, resulting in the establishment of a nonlinear chemical oscillator. The only common element in ...
(BZ reaction) in the early 1950s. His work initiated the field of modern
nonlinear
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many othe ...
chemical dynamics.
The Belousov family had strong anti-
Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...
ist sympathies and, after the
Russian Revolution of 1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...
, they were arrested and later forced to leave the country. They settled in
Switzerland, where Boris studied chemistry in
Zürich
, neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon
, twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco
Zürich ...
.
Returning to Russia at the beginning of World War I,
[Ник. Горькавый]
Сказка о химике Белоусове, который изготовил жидкие часы
Ж. НиЖ №2, 2011 г. Belousov tried to join the army, but was denied for health reasons. He took up a job in a military lab under the direction of the chemist
Vladimir Ipatiev.
His value to the institute is indicated by the high military rank, Brigade Commander, roughly corresponding to General, that he attained.
After leaving the military, he took a job in the Laboratory of Biophysics in the
Ministry of Health of the USSR, where he worked in
toxicology
Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating e ...
. It was while seeking an inorganic analog of the biochemical
citric acid cycle
The citric acid cycle (CAC)—also known as the Krebs cycle or the TCA cycle (tricarboxylic acid cycle)—is a series of chemical reactions to release stored energy through the oxidation of acetyl-CoA derived from carbohydrates, fats, and protein ...
that Belousov chanced to discover an
oscillating chemical reaction. He tried twice over a period of six years to publish his findings, but the incredulous editors of the journals to which he submitted his articles rejected his work as "impossible". He took this very hard.
The biochemist
Simon El'evich Shnoll
Simon El'evich Shnol (russian: Симон Эльевич Шноль; 21 March 1930 – 11 September 2021) was a biophysicist, and a historian of Soviet science. He was a professor at Physics Department of Moscow State University and a member of ...
, at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics in
Pushchino
Pushchino ( rus, Пущино, p=ˈpuɕːɪnə) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, an important scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Situated south of Moscow, and 13 km south-east of Serpukhov, on the right side of the Ok ...
, heard of Belousov's work and tried to encourage him to continue. Belousov gave Shnoll some of his experimental notes and agreed to publish an article in a rather obscure, non-reviewed, journal, but then essentially quit science. Shnoll gave the project to a graduate student,
Anatol Zhabotinsky
Anatol Markovich Zhabotinsky (Анато́лий Ма́ркович Жаботи́нский) (January 17, 1938 – September 16, 2008) was a Soviet biophysicist who created a theory of the chemical clock known as Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactio ...
, who investigated the reaction in detail and succeeded in publishing his results.
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