Mikhail Volkenshtein

Born Oct. 10 (23), 1912, in St. Petersburg. Soviet physical chemist and biophysicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966).

Vol’kenshtein graduated from the physics department of Moscow State University in 1935. He was head of the laboratory of the Institute of Macromolecular Compounds of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1948 to 1967 and a professor at Leningrad University from 1945 to 1953 and from 1963 to 1968. In 1967 he became head of the laboratories of the Institute of Molecular Biology and the Institute of Biophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His major works deal with the physics of molecules and with polymers and molecular biophysics. He is the originator of the theory of intensities in the vibrational spectra of molecules. Vol’kenshtein developed the statistical physics of macromolecules on the basis of the so-called rotational isomeric theory and has conducted theoretical and experimental studies on the structure and properties of molecules, polymers, and biopolymers. He has founded a school devoted to the theory of the physics of macromolecules. Vol’kenshtein received the State Prize of the USSR in 1950.