Alexander Shilov

Alexander E. Shilov was a Russian chemist, one of the leading figures in Physical Organic Chemistry and Catalysis.
Shilov was born in Ivanovo, Russia, studied chemistry in Kiev and received his diploma degree in 1952 from Kiev State University. In 1952-1955 he began working with Nobel Laureate Nikolay Semyonov toward his Ph.D. at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. After postdoctoral studies with Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood at Oxford University in London, he returned to the Institute of Biochemical Physics, where he became Director and Professor at Moscow State University. In 1952 he moved to Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka, where he became the Head of Laboratory. In 1990 he was elected to the Academy of Scienсes of the USSR, which was in someway equivalent to getting a financial endowment for his research.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he discovered what are considered to be the first reported examples of alkane reactions catalyzed by a homogeneous system, the Pt-catalyzed CH activation of alkanes, now known as the Shilov system.