Alexander E. Shilov

Alexander E. Shilov (Russian: Шилов, Александр Евгеньевич) (January 1, 1930 – June 6, 2014) was a Russian chemist.
Shilov was born in Ivanovo, Russia, studied Chemistry in Kiev and received his diploma degee 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 (Moscow), 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 (Moscow district), where he became the Head of Laboratory.
In the late 1960s, he first discovered Pt-catalyzed CH activation of alkanes and first provided mechanism supported by kinetic analysis, known as the Shilov system. In 1990 he received the Academian of Scienсes. Academian Shilov is the author of the famous book Activation and Catalytic Reactions of Saturated Hydrocarbons in the Presence of Metal Complexes together with Georgiy B. Shul'pin. In addition to his achievements, he first proposed dinitrogen reduction to ammonia in aqueous media by using organometallic complexes.
His scientific interests have been published in more than 300 papers and cover research in chemical kinetics and catalysis, mechanisms of chemical reactions, chemical modeling of enzyme systems.