Leonidas Zervas

Zervas, Leonidas

 

Born May 21, 1902, in Megalopolis. Greek organic chemist. Member of the Academy of Athens (1956; president, 1969–70).

Zervas entered the University of Athens in 1918 and the University of Berlin in 1921. He carried out research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Dresden from 1929 to 1934 and at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York from 1934 to 1937. From 1937 to 1939 he was a professor at the University of Thessaloniki, and in 1939 he became a professor at the University of Athens. Zervas’ principal works deal with the chemistry of peptides. An industrial method of synthesizing insulin is based on his research.

Zervas became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1976.