MELODY KO/TUFTS UNIVERSITY
Elena Rybak-Akimova, a chemist at Tufts University who studied how activated oxygen molecules drive biological processes, died of cancer this week (March 11) at age 56.
“She was a fearless scientist,” Krishna Kumar, the Tufts Chemistry Department Chair, says in a statement. “The community recognized her as a ‘chemist’s chemist’—in that she took on problems that were difficult.”
Rybak-Akimova was born in 1961 in Ukraine and earned her PhD in inorganic chemistry from the country’s Academy of Sciences. While in high school, she was the first girl to win a gold medal in Ukraine’s National Chemistry Olympiad, which gave her “legendary status,” Tufts chemist Sergiy Kryatov, who she later coached for the same competition, says in the statement. “She was a wonderful human being. It’s ...
