LAUSR

On the 1st of June 2019, an outstanding Russian Biophysicist, Professor Alexander Yurievich (Yu) Borisov, passed away at the age of 89. He was born on June 29, 1930 in the city of Saratov. His father (Yuri Alexandrovich Borisov) was an Accountant, and his mother (Nadejda Lookinichna Borisova) was an English and German Teacher. His wife Olga Filippovna Borisova, who died in 2017, had been a Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences under Lev A. Tumerman (1898–1986) and Mikhail Volkenstein. Olga was an expert on ‘The photophysics of nucleic acids, and the interaction of nucleic acids with dyes’ (see e.g., Borisova et al. 1974, where one of us, APR, was her coauthor). Alexander Yu. Borisov is survived by his two sons Andrey Alexandrovitch Borisov and Yuri Alexandrovitch Borisov and their families. See Fig. 1 for a portrait of Alexander Yurievich Borisov. [As a side note on his personal life, Alexander Borisov fell ill during the World War II with tuberculosis. However, after recovering from this disease, he was actively involved in sports all his life, played volleyball, soccer, walked a lot, and rode a bicycle.] Alexander Borisov entered the Physics Department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University and graduated from it in the early 1950s. He then worked for an institute that was classified for national security, where he measured distances by what was called “the phase method.” Three years later, he went to work at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. We note that there he was trained in the Laboratory of Lev Tumerman who had played a significant role in the development of Biophysics of Photosynthesis in Russia (Borisov 2005; Rich 1978). Here, Borisov worked as an Engineer and helped Tumerman build a ‘Phase Fluorometer.” In the early 1960s, Borisov defended his Doctoral Thesis at the State Optical Institute in Leningrad. After that he moved to Moscow State University, to the Inter-Faculty Problem Laboratory, which later became the Andrey (A) Nikolayevich (N) Belozersky Research Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology. He remained at this institute for over 50 years. For many years, he served as the Head of the Department of Photosynthesis and Fluorescence Methods, which he had founded. Note that Govindjee’s legal name since 2018 is ‘Govindjee Govindjee’, but he continues to publish under one name.