Boris Pavlovich Belousov (; 19 February 1893 – 12 June 1970) was a
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
and
biophysicist
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...
who discovered the
Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction
A Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, or BZ reaction, is one of a class of reactions that serve as a classical example of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, resulting in the establishment of a nonlinear chemical oscillator. The only common element in ...
(BZ reaction) in the early 1950s. His work initiated the field of modern
nonlinear
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathe ...
chemical dynamics
Chemical kinetics, also known as reaction kinetics, is the branch of physical chemistry that is concerned with understanding the rates of chemical reactions. It is different from chemical thermodynamics, which deals with the direction in which a ...
.
The Belousov family had strong anti-
Tsar
Tsar (; also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar''; ; ; sr-Cyrl-Latn, цар, car) is a title historically used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word '' caesar'', which was intended to mean ''emperor'' in the Euro ...
ist sympathies and, after the
Russian Revolution of 1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, t ...
, they were arrested and later forced to leave the country. They settled in
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
, where Boris studied chemistry in
Zürich
Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
.
Returning to Russia at the beginning of World War I,
[Ник. Горькавый]
Сказка о химике Белоусове, который изготовил жидкие часы
Ж. НиЖ №2, 2011 г. Belousov tried to join the army, but was denied for health reasons. He took up a job in a military lab under the direction of the chemist
Vladimir Ipatiev.
His value to the institute is indicated by the high military rank, Brigade Commander, roughly corresponding to General, that he attained.
After leaving the military, he took a job in the Laboratory of Biophysics in the
Ministry of Health of the USSR, where he worked in
toxicology
Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating ex ...
. It was while seeking an inorganic analog of the biochemical
citric acid cycle
The citric acid cycle—also known as the Krebs cycle, Szent–Györgyi–Krebs cycle, or TCA cycle (tricarboxylic acid cycle)—is a series of chemical reaction, biochemical reactions that release the energy stored in nutrients through acetyl-Co ...
that Belousov chanced to discover an
oscillating chemical reaction. He tried twice over a period of six years to publish his findings, but the incredulous editors of the journals to which he submitted his articles rejected his work as "impossible". He took this very hard.
The biochemist
Simon El'evich Shnoll
Simon El'evich Shnol (; 21 March 1930 – 11 September 2021) was a biophysicist, and a historian of Soviet science. He was a professor at Physics Department of Moscow State University and a member of Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. His fie ...
, at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics in
Pushchino
Pushchino ( rus, Пущино, p=ˈpuɕːɪnə) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, an important scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Situated south of Moscow, and 13 km south-east of Serpukhov, on the right side of the Ok ...
, heard of Belousov's work and tried to encourage him to continue. Belousov gave Shnoll some of his experimental notes and agreed to publish an article in a rather obscure, non-reviewed, journal, but then essentially quit science. Shnoll gave the project to a graduate student,
Anatol Zhabotinsky
Anatol Markovich Zhabotinsky (Анато́лий Ма́ркович Жаботи́нский) (January 17, 1938 – September 16, 2008) was a Soviet biophysicist who created a theory of the chemical clock known as Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactio ...
, who investigated the reaction in detail and succeeded in publishing his results.
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