Bakh, Oleksii

Bakh, Oleksii [Бах, Олексій; Bax, Oleksij], b 17 March 1857 in Zolotonosha, Poltava gubernia, d 13 May 1946 in Moscow. Biochemist and revolutionary activist. Bakh was founder of the Soviet biochemical school and a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1929. He studied at Kyiv University and was expelled from it in 1878 for revolutionary activity. After serving a term of exile, he returned to Kyiv and continued his revolutionary work in the organization Narodnaia Volia in 1883. In 1885 he emigrated and worked in biochemical laboratories in France from 1894 and later in Geneva. In 1917 he returned to Russia. In Moscow he founded and directed the L. Karpov Physics and Chemistry Institute, the Biochemistry Institute of the People’s Commissariat of Public Health of the USSR, and the Biochemistry Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which is named after him. Bakh wrote over 100 works, dealing mostly with photosynthesis, oxidation processes in cells, and fermentation.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]