Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (russian: Александр Иванович Опарин; – April 21, 1980) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of "biological ch ...

notable for his theories about the

origin of life In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

, and for his book ''The Origin of Life''. He also studied the biochemistry of material processing by plants and

enzyme Enzymes () are proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecules known as products ...

reactions in

plant cell Plant cells are the cells present in green plants, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Their distinctive features include primary cell walls containing cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectin, the presence of plastids with the capab ...

s. He showed that many

food production The food industry is a complex, global network of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The food industry today has become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditional, ...

processes were based on

biocatalysis Biocatalysis refers to the use of living (biological) systems or their parts to speed up (catalyze) chemical reactions. In biocatalytic processes, natural catalysts, such as enzymes, perform chemical transformations on organic compounds. Both enz ...

and developed the foundations for industrial

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

in the USSR.

Life

Born in

Uglich Uglich ( rus, У́глич, p=ˈuɡlʲɪtɕ) is a historic town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River. Population: History The city was first documented in 1148 as ''Ugliche Pole'' (''Corner Field''). The town's name is though ...

in 1894, Oparin graduated from the

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

in 1917 and became a professor of biochemistry there in 1927. Many of his early papers were about plant enzymes and their role in

metabolism Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run ...

. In 1924 he put forward a hypothesis suggesting that

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

on Earth developed through a gradual chemical evolution of

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon ma ...

-based

molecule A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and b ...

s in the Earth's primordial soup. In 1935, along with academician Alexey Bakh, he founded the Biochemistry Institute of the

Soviet Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

. In 1939, Oparin became a Corresponding Member of the Academy, and, in 1946, a full member. In 1940s and 1950s he supported the theories of

Trofim Lysenko Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (russian: Трофим Денисович Лысенко, uk, Трохи́м Дени́сович Лисе́нко, ; 20 November 1976) was a Soviet agronomist and pseudo-scientist.''An ill-educated agronomist with hu ...

and Olga Lepeshinskaya, who made claims about "the origin of cells from noncellular matter". "Taking the

party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often featu ...

line" helped advance his career.Vadim J. Birstein. ''The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science.'' Westview Press (2004) In 1970, he was elected President of the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life. He died in Moscow on April 21, 1980, and was interred in

Novodevichy Cemetery Novodevichy Cemetery ( rus, Новоде́вичье кла́дбище, Novodevichye kladbishche) is a cemetery in Moscow. It lies next to the southern wall of the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular touris ...

in Moscow. Oparin became

Hero of Socialist Labour The Hero of Socialist Labour (russian: links=no, Герой Социалистического Труда, Geroy Sotsialisticheskogo Truda) was an honorific title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries from 1938 to 1991. It repre ...

in 1969, received the Lenin Prize in 1974 and was awarded the

Lomonosov Gold Medal The Lomonosov Gold Medal (russian: Большая золотая медаль имени М. В. Ломоносова ''Bol'shaya zolotaya medal' imeni M. V. Lomonosova''), named after Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, is awarded ...

in 1979 "for outstanding achievements in biochemistry". He was also a five-time recipient of the

Order of Lenin The Order of Lenin (russian: Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina, ), named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration ...

Theory of the origin of life

Although Oparin's started out reviewing various

panspermia Panspermia () is the hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th century BCE by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacec ...

theories, including those of

Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associat ...

and William Thomson Kelvin, he was primarily interested in how life began. As early as 1922, he asserted that: # There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter. The complex combination of manifestations and properties characteristic of life must have arisen as a part of the process of the evolution of matter. # Taking into account the recent discovery of

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane ...

in the atmospheres of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...

and the other giant planets, Oparin suggested that the infant Earth had possessed a strongly

reducing atmosphere A reducing atmosphere is an Atmosphere, atmospheric condition in which oxidation is prevented by removal of oxygen and other oxidizing gases or vapours, and which may contain actively Reducing agent, reducing gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxi ...

, containing methane, ammonia,

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-to ...

and water vapor. In his opinion, these were the raw materials for the evolution of life. # In Oparin's formulation, there were first only simple solutions of

organic matter Organic matter, organic material, or natural organic matter refers to the large source of carbon-based compounds found within natural and engineered, terrestrial, and aquatic environments. It is matter composed of organic compounds that have c ...

, the behavior of which was governed by the properties of their component atoms and the arrangement of these atoms into a molecular structure. Gradually though, he said, the resulting growth and increased complexity of molecules brought new properties into being and a new colloidal-chemical order developed as a successor to more simple relationships between and among organic chemicals. These newer properties were determined by the interactions of these more complex molecules. # Oparin posited that this process brought biological orderliness into prominence. According to Oparin, competition, speed of cell growth, survival of the fittest, struggle for existence and, finally,

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...

determined the form of material organization characteristic of modern-day living things. Oparin outlined a way he thought that basic organic chemicals might have formed into microscopic localized systems, from which primitive living things could have developed. He cited work done by de Jong and

Sidney W. Fox Sidney Walter Fox (24 March 1912 – 10 August 1998) was a Los Angeles-born biochemist responsible for discoveries on the origins of biological systems. Fox explored the synthesis of amino acids from inorganic molecules, the synthesis of prot ...

on coacervates and research by others, including himself, into organic chemicals which, in solution, might spontaneously form droplets and layers. Oparin suggested that different types of coacervates could have formed in the Earth's primordial ocean and been subject to a selection process that led, eventually, to life. While Oparin himself was unable to conduct experiments to test any of these ideas, later researchers tried. In 1953,

Stanley Miller Stanley Lloyd Miller (March 7, 1930 – May 20, 2007) was an American chemist who made landmark experiments in the origin of life by demonstrating that a wide range of vital organic compounds can be synthesized by fairly simple chemical processe ...

attempted an experiment to investigate whether chemical self-organization could have been possible on pre-historic Earth. The

Miller–Urey experiment The Miller–Urey experiment (or Miller experiment) is a famous chemistry experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time (1952) to be present in the atmosphere of the early, prebiotic Earth, in order to test the hypothesis of the ...

introduced heat (to provide reflux) and electrical energy (sparks, to simulate

lightning Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an average ...

) into a mixture of several simple components that would be present in a reducing atmosphere. Within a fairly short period of time a variety of familiar organic compounds, such as

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha ...

s, were synthesised. The compounds that formed were somewhat more complex than the molecules present at the beginning of the experiment.

The influence of dialectical materialism on Oparin's theory

The

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...

's official interpretation of

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

dialectical materialism Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world co ...

, fit Oparin's speculation on the origins of life as 'a flow, an exchange, a dialectical unity'. This notion was re-enforced by Oparin's association with Lysenko.

Major works

* Oparin, A. I. ''Proiskhozhdenie zhizni''. Moscow: Izd. Moskovskii Rabochii, 1924. ** English translations: *** Oparin, A. I. "The origin of life", translation by Ann Synge. In: Bernal, J. D. (ed.), ''The origin of life'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1967, p. 199–234
GoogleValencia University
*** Oparin, A. I. ''The Origin and Development of Life'' (NASA TTF-488). Washington: D.C.L GPO, 1968. * Oparin, A. I. ''Vozniknovenie zhizni na zemle''. Moscow: Izd. Akad. Nauk SSSR, 1936. ** English translations: *** Oparin, A. I. ''The Origin of Life'', 1st ed., New York: Macmillan, 1938. *** Oparin, A. I. ''The Origin of Life'', 2nd ed., New York: Dover, 1953, reprinted in 2003
Google
*** Oparin, A. I. ''The Origin of Life on the Earth'', 3rd ed., New York: Academic Press, 1957
BHL
* Oparin, A., Fesenkov, V. ''Life in the Universe''. Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences publisher, 3rd edition, 1956. ** English translation: Oparin, A., and V. Fesenkov. ''Life in the Universe''. New York: Twayne Publishers (1961). * "The External Factors in Enzyme Interactions Within a Plant Cell" * "Life, Its Nature, Origin and Evolution" * "The History of the Theory of Genesis and Evolution of Life"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oparin, Alexander 1894 births 1980 deaths Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery Heroes of Socialist Labour Kalinga Prize recipients Lenin Prize winners Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Moscow State University alumni People from Uglich Russian biochemists Russian biologists Soviet biochemists Soviet biologists 20th-century biologists Origin of life Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences editors

Life

Theory of the origin of life

The influence of dialectical materialism on Oparin's theory

Major works

See also

References