Alexander E. Shilov
Alexander E. Shilov was a Russian chemist.
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 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. Shilov and co-workers conducted extensive mechanistic investigations of this chemistry based on kinetic analysis.
In 1990 he received the Academian of Scienсes. In addition to his pioneering work in the activation and functionalization of hydrocarbons, his interests encompassed dinitrogen reduction to ammonia in aqueous media with the use of organometallic complexes.
His work has been published in more than 300 papers which cover research in chemical kinetics and catalysis, mechanisms of chemical reactions, and chemical modeling of enzyme systems.
