Sobir Yunusov

Sabir Yunusovich Yunusov (Uzbek: Sobir Yunusov) was born on 18 March 1909 in Tashkent. In 1935 he graduated from the Central Asian State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan). From the mid-1930s until 1941 he worked at the All-Union Chemical-Pharmaceutical Institute and then at the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, which he directed in 1950–1952.

He was elected an academician of the Uzbek SSR Academy of Sciences in 1952 and was its vice-president in 1952–1962; in 1958 he became a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A doctor of chemical sciences, he founded the Institute of the Chemistry of Plant Substances of the Uzbek SSR Academy of Sciences in 1956 and led it. He was a member of the German Leopoldina Academy.

His research centred on alkaloid chemistry: he built a school that searched Central Asian plants for alkaloids, isolated them and determined their structures, and according to sources hundreds of alkaloids were isolated under his leadership. His students included N. K. Abubakirov, Kh. A. Abduazimov, F. Yu. Yuldashev and S. T. Akramov. His son Marat Yunusov is also a chemist and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1971 he received the D. I. Mendeleev Gold Medal for his research on alkaloids. He was made Hero of Socialist Labour and received the Order of Lenin (1969) and the Beruni State Prize of the Uzbek SSR (1967), as well as the Orders of the October Revolution, the Red Banner of Labour, Friendship of Peoples and the Badge of Honour, and medals. He died in Tashkent on 29 November 1995; posthumously he was awarded the Order «Buyuk xizmatlari uchun» (2002) and the State Prize of Uzbekistan in science and technology (2007). The institute he founded now bears his name.