Sergei Rufovich Mardashev

Born Sept. 30 (Oct. 13), 1906, in Leningrad. Soviet biochemist. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1957). Hero of Socialist Labor (1964). Member of the CPSU since 1929.

Mardashev graduated from the Second Leningrad Medical Institute in 1930. He worked at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine from 1930 to 1939 and at the research laboratory from 1939 to 1962 (as director between 1952 and 1962). He became a professor at the First Moscow Medical Institute in 1943 and head of the biochemistry subdepartment in 1952. In 1959, Mardashev was appointed director of the enzymology laboratory at the Institute of Biological and Medical Chemistry of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (which became the research laboratory of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1972). Academician-secretary of the Division of Medical and Biological Sciences of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1962-63, Mardashev was a vice-president of the academy from 1963 to 1972 and became first vice-president of the academy in 1972.

Mardashev’s principal works deal with nitrogen metabolism in humans and animals under normal and pathological conditions, the biochemistry and physiology of microorganisms, the biochemistry of tumors, the formulation of enzymatic methods of determination of biologically active substances, and the diagnostics and treatment of diseases affecting the liver, kidneys, and pancreas. Mardashev first detected the presence of free asparagine in animal tissue. He discovered that the /3-decarboxylation of aspartic acid results in the formation of a-alanine (1949). Mardashev isolated and studied crystalline histidine decarboxylase, which did not contain pyridoxal phosphate as a coenzyme (1964). A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1949), Mardashev has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and medals.