Alex Boldyrev

College Science

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. Alex Boldyrev was born in the Soviet Union and received his doctorate at Moscow State University. He then went on to receive a Habilitation degree (limited to independent researchers, with documented accomplishments, in the German and Soviet systems) at the USSR Academy of Sciences. Boldyrev spent 25 years in the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he rose through the ranks to the Head of a scientific group and Leading Researcher. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he won a Humboldt Fellowship to work in Germany where he was accorded faculty status. He has been at Utah State University since 1999.

As an author, Boldyrev published 126 articles during his tenure as Leading Researcher at the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1990, he has published another 133 research articles. These articles are published in some of the highest ranking peer-reviewed in his field and was cited by other scholars in their research 530 times in 2007.

Known for addressing central problems in a direct way, Boldyrev’s research involves “aromaticity,” the chemical bonding properties of organic compounds. By developing chemical-bonding models capable of explaining the structures of metallic clusters, Boldyrev has revealed that metals exhibit aromaticity, which could improve scientists’ understanding of the nature of catalytic activity and lead to the design of new catalysts.