Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk

Who was Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk?

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk was a Soviet biochemist and recipient of the Stalin Prize in 1942.

In 1913 Shmuk finished his studies at the Moscow Agricultural Academy. Between 1923 and 1937 he worked at the All-Union Institute of Tobacco and Low-Grade Tobacco while simultaneously holding a professorship at the Kuban Institute of Agriculture. He studied the biochemistry of tobacco and won the Stalin Prize for his work deriving nicotine, citric acid, and malic acid from low-grade tobacco. He is known primarily for his three volume work The Chemistry and Technology of Tobacco and for his development of a tobacco quality index which is calculated as the ratio between soluble carbohydrates and proteins. In 1935 he became a member of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union. He finished his career at the Soviet Academy of Science's Institute of Biochemistry.