Murat Aitkhozhin  Murat Abenovich Aitkhozhin (, Russian: Мурaт Абенович Айтхoжин) (29 June 1939 - 19 December 1987) was a Kazakh Soviet molecular biologist: the founder of molecular biology in Kazakhstan. He was the President of the Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences (1986–87), Deputy of The Supreme Soviet of the USSR, member (and Chairman of the Kazakh branch) of the Soviet Peace Fund. He was the founder and first Director of the Kazakh Institute of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry as well as being an Academian of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1983), Doctor of Sciences (1977), Professor (1980) and Lenin Prize laureate (1976). Murat Aitkhozhin was born on 29 June 1939 in Petropavlovsk in the Kazakh SSR in a large family. He was educated at the Kazakh State University (KazGU) (graduated in 1962) and Moscow State University (graduated in 1965). In 1966, Aitkhozhin defended his thesis on “Ribonucleic Acids in the Early Embryogenesis of Loach Misgurnus fossilis” and between 1965 and 1967 he worked as a junior researcher. From 1967 to 1969 he was a senior research fellow at the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, and became head of the laboratory in 1969. In 1976, he defended a doctoral dissertation at Moscow State University on the topic: "Ribonucleoprotein particles of higher plants." He was awarded the diploma No. 1 of a doctor of sciences in the specialty of molecular biology. In the same year he was awarded the most important prize of the USSR - the Lenin Prize for the discovery of a special class of ribonucleoprotein particles - informosomes. In 1978, he became the director of the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Academy the following year (1979). In 1983, he founded the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. and was elected to the position of Academian of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. The international recognition of the successes of molecular biology in Kazakhstan was the holding in 1984 of the international symposium "Prospects for bioorganic chemistry and molecular biology" at the Institute.