Aleksandr Oparin

Aleksandr Oparin (born Feb. 18 [March 2, New Style], 1894, Uglich, near Moscow, Russia—died April 21, 1980) was a Russian biochemist noted for his studies on the origin of life from chemical matter. By drawing on the insights of chemistry, he extended the Darwinian theory of evolution backward in time to explain how simple organic and inorganic materials might have combined into complex organic compounds and how the latter might have formed the primordial organism....