Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk (redirected from Shmuk)

Shmuk, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich 

Born Oct. 28 (Nov. 9), 1886, in Moscow; died there Jan. 22, 1945. Soviet biochemist. Academician of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935).

Shmuk graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute (now the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy) in 1913. From 1923 to 1937 he worked at the All-Union Institute of Tobacco and Makhorka in Krasnodar, serving as the institute’s director from 1924 to 1928. At the same time, he was a professor at the Kuban’ Agricultural Institute. In 1937 he became head of a laboratory of the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1939 to 1945 he was head of a laboratory of the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Shmuk’s main work dealt with the chemical composition of tobacco, soil chemistry, and various methods of agricultural chemical investigations. Shmuk devised ways of obtaining nicotine and citric and malic acids from raw makhorka (Indian tobacco).

Shmuk received the State Prize of the USSR in 1942. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

WORKS

Trudy, 1913–1945, vols. 1–3. Edited by N. I. Gavrilov. Moscow, 1950–53. (Contains references.)

REFERENCE

Il’in, G. “Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk” (obituary). Biokhimiia, 1945, vol. 10, issue 1.