Alexander Spirin (1931–2020): A visionary scientist, a teacher, a colleague, a friend

Abstract

Alexander Sergeevich Spirin, an international member of the National Academy of Sciences, recited this poem by Boris Pasternak while lecturing to the bright minds nourished by him. Fatefully, he passed away on the snowy day of December 30, 2020, extinguishing one of the brightest candles, but leaving behind many others that he had set alight. Alex received his PhD degree from the A. N. Bach Institute of Biochemistry (Moscow) in 1957 under the mentorship of Andrey N. Belozersky, who in the 1930s discovered the universal occurrence of DNA in plants, previously assumed to exist only in animals. This was the time of the Khrushchev thaw and a period of intellectual exuberance in the Soviet Union and the world, with the discovery of the double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick. The first “student” whom Alex tutored in molecular biology was the President of the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) Academy of Sciences, Mstislav Keldysh, who was greatly enchanted by the new and enlightening science. He granted Alex an opportunity to create a new Institute—the Institute of Protein Research—which was cofounded by Alex and Oleg Ptitsyn in 1967. It is located just outside Moscow in the town of Pushchino, a small academic center that had been especially built for biological research 10 years earlier. Alex’s philosophy was simple, but one often forsaken in modern science: Only scientific knowledge and the ability to envision new directions in research are meritorious, and the success of the individual depends on the teamwork of many. At his institution, one of the best known in the world dedicated to protein research, Alex created an intellectual hub, bringing together physicists, structural biologists, and biochemists. It was his strong belief that it is not past discovery, but the people and scientific culture that propel new directions in science. Alex and his team kept the fire of world-class science alive amid the blizzard of political and economic realities of the country that, until 1991, was the USSR. Alex was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, distinguished Professor and the head of Department of Molecular Biology of Moscow State University for almost half a century. His force of personality, his dedicated teaching, monographs, and textbooks—including the acclaimed Ribosomes (1)—shaped the directions of groundbreaking studies performed under his leadership or inspired by him. His lectures were renowned at the Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University, with students and researchers from around the city packing the auditorium to listen to Alex’s lectures on a myriad of topics, never repeating the same lecture twice. Alexander Spirin in the classroom. Image credit: Institute of Protein Research.