Boris Aleksandrovich Trofimov was born on October 2, 1938 in Chita. Since 1947 he has lived in Irkutsk, where he graduated from high school with a gold medal.

In 1961, after graduating (with honors) from Irkutsk State University, Boris Aleksandrovich began working at the newly organized Irkutsk Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (currently the Irkutsk Institute of Chemistry named after A.E. Favorsky SB RAS – IRICh) , with which his entire further creative destiny was connected and in which he grew up Senior Laboratory Assistant to Doctor of Chemical Sciences (1970), Professor (1974), Director of the Institute (1994–2015), full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2000), and Scientific Director of the IRICh (2015 to the present).

B.A. Trofimov made a significant contribution to domestic and world science. He proposed and developed new scientific principles of organic and organoelement acetylene-based synthesis. The original methods of synthesis of a large number of useful products, developed by B.A. Trofimov, are energy-, resource-, and atom-saving (based on addition reactions), and therefore, they have a minimal impact on the environment. He developed three main methodologies: 1) syntheses involving superbasic media, reagents, and catalysts; 2) syntheses involving highly reactive zwitter ions and their carbene tautomers: superbasic adducts of vital heterocyclic systems with activated acetylenes; and 3) cross coupling of pyrroles or indoles with acetylenes on the active surfaces of metal oxides and salts (rather than in the presence of noble metal complex catalysts).

One of the main fundamental results of his research is the development of a new highly efficient one-pot synthesis of pyrroles (key structural units of the most important life-supporting systems such as chlorophyll and hemoglobin, as well as of many drugs) from ketones and acetylene (via ketoximes). This reaction was included in monographs, textbooks, and reference publications (including the US Chemical Technology Encyclopedia) under the name of its discoverer (Trofimov’s reaction), and it is now increasingly used in the synthesis of drug precursors and materials for various sectors of the national economy and defense industry (organic semiconductors, electro- and photochromic materials, sensors, and optoelectronic devices).

Superbasic catalysts made it possible to develop the first technology-oriented syntheses of phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium compounds via direct reactions of elemental phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium with acetylenes and other industrially available electrophilic reagents (styrenes, vinylpyridines, and alkyl-, aryl(hetaryl)-, and aryl(hetaryl)methyl halides). In relation to phosphorus, these reactions are now increasingly cited as the Trofimov–Gusarova reactions.

The developed approach made available primary, secondary, and tertiary phosphines and phosphine chalcogenides, including such high-demand ligands as triphenyl-, tristyryl-, tris(2-pyridyl)-, tris(2-arylethyl)-, and tris(2-pyridylethyl)phosphines. Recently, the direct phosphorylation of alkyl bromides with elemental phosphorus in aqueous KOH under micellar catalysis the direct phosphorylation has been used as the basis for the development of an original, easily scalable, and technologically feasible synthesis of alkylphosphinic acids―intermediates for innovative technologies and precursors of drugs, including antivirals.

Academician B.A. Trofimov and his colleagues also discovered a new type of cross-coupling reactions of acetylenes with principal heterocycles, that occur on the active surfaces of widely available metal oxides and salts, specifically Al2O3, CaO, ZnO, and K2O3 (without the use of traditional palladium catalysts or complex metal complexes). This made it possible for the first time to introduce functionalized acetylene substituents on pyrrole and indole rings.

In recent years, B.A. Trofimov and his students discovered a new general carbon–carbon bond formation: the addition of ketone carbanions to acetylenes in the presence of superbasic catalysts. The successful development of this original approach led to the discovery of a new essential family of superbase-catalyzed self-assembly reactions of a few acetylene molecules with a nucleophilic reagent to produce complex heterocyclic systems.

In these reactions, acetylene plays the role of a leading and organizing molecule, that triggers these processes due to its ability to act alternately as an electrophile and as a nucleophile. As a result, new one-pot, atom-efficient, and energy-saving methods for constructing vitally important functionalized heterocycles and open-chain highly unsaturated structures, aimed at solving current pharmacological problems, have been introduced into organic synthesis. These pioneering methodologies open up new horizons in acetylene-based organic synthesis.

The scientific and publishing activity of Academician B.A. Trofimov still remains high: over the past 5 years he has published 2 monographs, a chapter in a book, 7 reviews, and 200 scientific articles in leading Russian and foreign journals, received 6 patents (the total number of his publications exceeds 2700); its total citation index is 13500, Hirsch index is 41 (data from the Web of Science database). Among the students of B.A. Trofimov, there are 33 doctors of sciences and 105 candidates of sciences.

This is how Boris Aleksandrovich himself evaluates his life in science: “...I chose chemistry as a profession. Years have passed, but I still believe that chemistry, and especially organic synthesis, is the most creative and fruitful field of human activity. Indeed, to obtain the desired molecule with desired properties, or to find out how a complex natural compound can be assembled from simpler ones are tasks that bring us closer to the Creator’s Laboratory (in the book “Honorary Professors of the Chemical Department of the St. Petersburg State University,” St. Petersburg , 2012).”

As a true intellectual, Boris Aleksandrovich loves and knows well Russian literature―Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok, Yesenin, and Vysotskii. He is able to recite his favorite poets by heart for hours.

B.A. Trofimov was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor (1986) and the Order of Friendship (1999), and the medal “For Valiant Labor” (1971). In 2012, he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology, he was received A.M. Butlerov (1997) and A.N. Nesmeyanov (2012) awards. Academician B.A. Trofimov is an Honorary Professor of the St. Petersburg (2012) and Irkutsk (2019) State Uuniversities, and has also the title of the Honorary Citizen of the Irkutsk Region (2012). In 2017, he was awarded the prize named after Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) of Moscow and Kolomna for the work “New methodologies of Organic Synthesis, Focused on the Pharmaceutical Industry, High-Tech Small-Scale Chemistry and Advanced Technologies.”

Dear Boris Aleksandrovich!

The staff of the Irkutsk Institute of Chemistry SB RAS cordially congratulates you on your anniversary!

We are proud to call you our Teacher and Scientific Director!

We never cease to be amazed by the abundance of your original scientific ideas, the breadth of your scientific interests, and your incredible ability to work. We wish you further scientific discoveries and creative victories!