Parnas, Jakub

Parnas, Jakub or Yakov [Парнас, Яков], b 28 January 1884 in Mokriany, Sambir county, Galicia, d 29 January 1949 in Moscow. Biochemist; full member of the Polish Academy of Learning from 1931, the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1942, and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences from 1944. A graduate of the Berlin Technological Institute (1904), he also studied at Strasbourg University (1905) and Zurich University (1906–7), was a professor at Warsaw University (1916–19), directed the Medical Chemistry Institute at Lviv University (1920–41) and the Biochemistry Institute of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow (1944–8), and organized and directed the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943–9). Parnas studied carbohydrate metabolism and enzymic reactions as key factors in muscle contraction, established the pathway of glycogen formation from glyceraldehyde in the liver, and investigated ammonia formation in blood. In 1935 he codiscovered glycogen cleavage by phosphoric acid. In 1937 he proposed, jointly with Danish physicists, the use of the phosphorus-32 isotope as a marker in biological research; this advance led biochemists to a detailed understanding of carbohydrate metabolism in muscle—the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas or EMP scheme. Parnas wrote 120 works, including a Polish physiological chemistry textbook (1922). He was arrested by the MVD in 1949, and died in prison.

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