Utah State College mourns the passing of Division of Chemistry and Biochemistry professor Alexander Ivanovich “Alex” Boldyrev, who died Saturday, Aug. 26, 2023, at age 71, after an prolonged sickness.
Boldyrev was a celebrated computational chemist in a variety of subjects associated to quantum chemistry and bodily chemistry, in addition to a revered mentor and colleague to many Aggie students. He joined USU in 1999 and was named the college’s inaugural R. Gaurth Hansen Professor in 2020.
“Alex was a world chief within the utility of idea to understanding chemistry,” says Lance Seefeldt, professor and head of USU’s Division of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “His work has been cited over 25,000 instances. Along with his many contributions in analysis, he was additionally a frontrunner in coaching new scientists, along with his college students typically profitable instructing and analysis awards. Throughout his 24 years at USU, he earned nice respect and reward for his mind and professionalism. He will likely be so missed by all of us within the Chemistry Division.”
USU Vice President for Analysis Lisa Berreau says Boldyrev’s analysis generated vital advances in chemical bonding, and his mentorship of graduate college students was “equally impactful.”
“Lots of Alex’s Ph.D. college students moved on to prestigious postdoctoral fellowships and educational positions,” Berreau says. “He cared deeply about USU college students and needed every to have a significant studying expertise in bodily chemistry. He leaves a legacy of excellence that earned him great respect from his friends at Utah State and the world over.”
Throughout his USU profession, Boldyrev obtained quite a few accolades for his pioneering analysis and for his devoted instructing. In 2021, he was named a Fellow of the American Affiliation for the Development of Science, one of many nation’s high scientific honors. In 2009, Boldyrev obtained Utah State’s highest analysis honor, the D. Wynne Thorne Profession Analysis Award.
A prolific analysis author and longstanding recipient of Nationwide Science Basis assist, Boldyrev found all kinds of recent courses of chemical species, together with all-metal fragrant clusters, inorganic helixes, superhalogens and superalkalis, planar boron clusters and boron wheels binding transition-metal atoms with excessive coordination numbers of greater than 10. His current analysis focus was synthetic intelligence, which he and his college students employed within the seek for essentially the most steady buildings of recent molecules and for the computational design of recent supplies.
In October 2021, Boldyrev was honored with a “festschrift,” a lifetime tribute, by The Journal of Bodily Chemistry A. The uncommon honor by the premier scientific journal acknowledged the USU scholar’s profession of excessive achievements with a particular subject that includes almost 80 papers authored by researchers from world wide, together with quite a few Boldyrev’s former college students.
Along with analysis accolades, Boldyrev was well-known for his mentorship of scholars. When praised, he was fast to shift the main focus to the achievements of his mentees, which included six students named USU Robins Award Graduate Scholar Researchers of the Yr, in addition to two current graduates who obtained extremely aggressive Oppenheimer Postdoctoral Fellowships. Boldyrev was named Utah State’s Excellent Graduate Mentor of the Yr in 2017.
Born within the industrial Siberian metropolis of Novokuznetsk in 1951, Boldyrev got here of age because the area race heated up between the previous Soviet Union and the USA. Although solely 5 years previous on the time of Sputnik 1’s launch, subsequent advances in area exploration fired the teenager’s creativeness.
“The area program was the largest pleasure in my life,” recalled Boldyrev in a 2007 interview.
Awed by a chemistry trainer’s presentation to preschoolers, which included “making ‘blood’ instantly seem,” the teenager knew earlier than getting into faculty at age 7 that he needed to turn out to be a chemist.
The virtually minded Boldyrev reasoned that, whereas chemists may not be known as upon to pilot rockets, the scientists had been sure to be included in future area exploration.
“My accountability was growing rocket gasoline,” Boldyrev stated.
Along with his brothers and associates, the younger lad spent hours constructing rockets. The easy automobiles had been fabricated from paper, however the gasoline required higher thought and energy.
“We constructed our personal equipment to burn wooden for charcoal, added sulfur and blended nitrate from fertilizer into the gasoline,” stated Boldyrev, who sustained singed eyebrows no less than as soon as throughout his intrepid experiments. “Our rockets traveled as excessive as 100 meters into the air. For us, it was very excessive.”
Whereas comedian books might need been the anticipated studying matter for one his age, Boldyrev pored over technical studies issued by TASS, the Soviet area company. He remembers idolizing Soviet cosmonauts, together with Yuri Gagarin, the primary individual to orbit the Earth.
“The development of the area program was so quick,” Boldyrev stated. “Gagarin traveled into area simply 4 years after Sputnik. When Sputnik 1 was launched, nobody knew if a residing factor might survive in area. The thrill was huge.”
Younger Boldyrev surmised people would quickly journey to the Moon, Mars, Venus and past. He nervous nothing could be left to discover by the point he reached maturity.
At age 15, Boldyrev’s educational aptitude propelled him to the newly established Excessive Faculty of Physics and Arithmetic No. 165, (at the moment generally known as the Specialised Instructional Scientific Heart), a secondary faculty for college kids gifted in math and science on the college in Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest metropolis, some 300 miles from his mother and father’ house.
Boldyrev reveled within the alternative.
“Think about — a college with 300 youngsters all loopy about science,” he stated. “It was a lot enjoyable.”
After commencement, Boldyrev superior to Novosibirsk College, the place he accomplished undergraduate and graduate levels. Throughout his graduate research, Boldyrev first encountered quantum-chemical calculations, which formed his future scientific profession. Throughout these years, Boldyrev additionally met and married Natalia Klimenko Boldyreva, and welcomed their son, Dmitry Boldyrev.
From Novosibirsk, Boldyrev moved to the tutorial metropolis of Chernogolovka, northeast of Moscow, the place he earned a doctoral diploma in bodily chemistry from Moscow State College and the Institute of Chemical Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences in 1978. Boldyrev accomplished a Physician of Science diploma, the Soviet Union’s highest scientific diploma, from the Institute of Chemical Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1986.
Employed with the Soviet Academy of Sciences for almost 20 years, Boldyrev was invited to Germany on an Alexander von Humboldt Basis Analysis Fellowship and, shortly thereafter, accepted a visiting professorship on the College of Utah earlier than becoming a member of Utah State’s school in 1999.
“I grew to become an assistant professor at 49 years previous,” wrote Boldyrev in an autobiography revealed in The Journal of Bodily Chemistry A in 2021. “I tremendously respect Utah State College for the chance to do science and educate college students within the U.S.”
Reflecting on Sputnik’s legacy, Boldyrev stated the missions tremendously superior area exploration, however much more vital was the satellites’ influence on STEM training.
“Sputnik tremendously affected Soviet science training, in addition to training within the U.S. and all through the world,” he stated, including he hoped efforts to achieve Mars would once more spark younger college students’ curiosity in math and science in addition to gasoline renewed dedication to superior training.
“Mars missions require an entire new stage of thought and expertise,” he stated.
A full obituary honoring Professor Boldyrev is offered on-line. Donations may be made to a scholarship fund created in his honor.
