Sergei Salazkin

Born Feb. 26 (Mar. 10), 1862, in what is now the village of Doshchatoe, Vyksa Raion, Gorky Oblast; died Aug. 4, 1932, in Leningrad. Soviet biochemist.

Salazkin graduated from the physicomathematical department of the University of St. Petersburg and from the medical school of the University of Kiev in 1891. From 1898 to 1911 he was a professor at the Women’s Medical Institute in St. Petersburg, and from 1918 to 1925, rector and professor at the University of the Crimea in Simferopol’. He was a professor at the Leningrad Medical Institute from 1925 to 1931. Salazkin worked at the Institute for Experimental Medicine from 1926 until 1931; he became director of the institute in 1927.

Salazkin’s main work was on nitrogen metabolism in animals; he studied the mechanism and site of formation of the end products of nitrogen metabolism (urea and uric acid), the role of the liver in this process, and the importance of ammonia. He demonstrated that urea is formed in mammals from amino acids and studied the metabolism of uric acid in birds and the role of red blood cells and hemoglobin in the formation of urea in the liver.