Palladin, Oleksandr

Palladin, Oleksandr or Aleksandr [Палладін, Олександр], b 10 September 1885 in Moscow, d 6 December 1972 in Kyiv. Biochemist; corresponding member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) from 1926 and full member from 1929; full member of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences from 1934, the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1942, and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences from 1944. A graduate of Saint Petersburg (later Petrograd) University (1908; M SC, 1917), he was a professor at the Kharkiv Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (1916–21; later Kharkiv Agricultural Institute), taught at Kharkiv University (1917–21), and was a professor in and chairman of the biochemistry departments at the Kharkiv Medical Institute (1921–31) and Kyiv University (1934–54). He founded and directed the Ukrainian Biochemical Institute in Kharkiv (1925–31) and the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in Kyiv (1931–69); founded (1926) and edited Ukraïns’kyi biokhimichnyi zhurnal; founded and headed the Ukrainian Physiological Society (1928–58); was a member of the VUAN/AN URSR presidium (from 1930), its secretary (1934–8), first vice-president (1939–46), and president (1946–62); served as a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (1947–63) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (1954–66); and headed the Ukrainian (1958–72) and USSR (1964–72) Biochemical societies.

The main subjects of Palladin’s research were the biochemistry of vitamins, of muscle activity, and of the nervous system in general. He pioneered Soviet biochemical research of vitamins and of metabolic disorders during avitaminosis; synthesized the K vitamin analog Vicasol; developed the concept of functional biochemistry relating to fatigue, rest, and muscle training; established the biochemical topography of nerve tissue; did radioactive tracer studies on the metabolism of proteins, nucleic acids, and phosphocarbohydrates in nerve tissue; and studied ionic transport processes in the nervous system. Palladin published over 240 works, including monographs on the biochemistry of the nervous system (1965) and on albumins of the brain and their exchange (1972), and textbooks on nutrition (1919, 1922, 1926) and biochemistry (1924; 12th edn 1946). His biobibliography by Aron Utevsky was published in Kyiv in 1959, 1961, and 1979. The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine awards annually the Palladin Biochemistry Prize (established in 1974).

Swiatoslaw Trofimenko

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]