Enzyme Catalysis Today and the Chemistry of the 21st Century

Gertz I. Likhtenshtein received his PhD (1963) and Doctor of Science (1972) degrees at the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian academy of Science, Moscow. In 1976 this Institute granted him the Professor title. In 1965 he was appointed to the position of Head of Laboratory of Chemical Physics of Enzyme Catalysis. In 1992 Likhtenshtein moved to the Department of Chemistry, the Ben-Gurion University of Negev (Israel) as full Professor and was in charge of the Laboratory of Chemical Biophysics. He has been emeritus Professor since 2003. In 2015 he returned in the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics as the director adviser. Among his awards are the Medal of the Exhibition of Economic Achievement (1968), the Diploma of Discovery USSR for works on nitrogen fixation (1969) , the USSR State Price for pioneering research on spin labeling in molecular biology (1977), the Diploma of the Israel Chemical Society (2000), the Academician V. V. Voevodsky International Price for ESR in biology (2008) , the Medal from President of Academy of science of Republic Tadjikistan (2008) , the Academician N.M. Emanuel Golden Medal (2015). In 2018 Likhtenshtein was elected as the Foreign Member of Academy of Science of Republic of Tadjkistan. He was a member of the International ESR Society, the American Biophysical Society, the Israel Chemical Society and the Israel ESR Society. At present, his main scientific interests focus on mechanism of the light energy conversion and on novel methods of immunoassay, NO and antioxidants analysis. Likhtenshtein authored 13 scientific books and close to 490 papers.