Academician RAS Victor Ovcharenko (1952 - 2022)

Victor Ovcharenko is an outstanding scientist, one of the founders of the field of design of molecular magnets, who has made a great contribution to world science and to the development of the field of molecular magnetism in Russia. In the field of molecular magnetic design, his scientific school is the leading one in Russia.

Under the leadership of Victor Ovcharenko, a broad range of studies of multi-spin compounds on the basis of transition metals and stable organic radicals were carried out. As a result, "spin transitions in nonclassical systems" were discovered, "breathing" heterospin crystals highly sensitive to temperature and pressure changes were created, unique contrasts for MR tomography were obtained, a new type of molecular near-field sensors was discovered, the first spin-labeled ferrocenes were synthesized, the first ferromagnets without "classical" magnetic elements were synthesized, the redox-induced change in coordination of paramagnetic ligands was discovered.

In general, in the field of "chemical design of molecular magnetics" Victor Ovcharenko developed the fundamental principles of directional molecular design of high-dimensional heterospin compounds based on transition metals with organic radicals that allow the study of subtle features of the interaction of unpaired electrons in multi-spin exchange clusters.

Since 2010, he served as a representative of the Russian Federation in the International Advisory Board of International Conference on Molecule-based Magnets (ICMM). Victor Ovcharenko was one of the initiators and organizers of the international conference "High-spin Molecules and Molecular Magnets", the annual Russian-Japanese seminar "Open Shell Compounds and Molecular Spin Devices", the first All-Russian conference "Organic Radicals: Fundamental and Applied Aspects". Thanks to his international authority, for the first time in Russia the largest international conference in the field of molecular magnetism ICMM-2014 was organized and successfully held.

Victor Ovcharenko is a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation for research of nitroxide radicals of the imidazoline series (1994), the author of more than 500 scientific papers published in international and Russian journals, 6 monographs and two Russian patents. Under his scientific supervision 3 doctoral theses and 15 Ph.D. theses were prepared and defended. Victor Ovcharenko was the member of the editorial board of journals "Russian Chemical Bulletin" and "Russian Journal of Coordination Chemistry", a member of the editorial board of the "Journal of Structural Chemistry"; a member of the Bureau of the Department of Chemistry and Material Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of scientific councils of Organic and Inorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the joint scientific council for chemical sciences of SB RAS. Member of the International Advisory Committee on Molecular Magnetics since 2010.