Alexander Goldfarb (biologist)

Alexander Davidovich Goldfarb
Александр Давидович Гольдфарб
Alexander Goldfarb in 2007
Born	(1947-05-23) May 23, 1947 (age 76) Moscow, Russia
Alma mater	Moscow State University (1969)
Occupation(s)	Microbiologist, Activist, Author
Known for	Co-founder of Litvinenko Justice Foundation

Alexander Davidovich Goldfarb (a.k.a. Alex Goldfarb, Russian: Александр Давидович Гольдфарб; born 1947 in Moscow) is a Russian-American microbiologist, activist, and author. He emigrated from the USSR in 1975 and studied in Israel and Germany before settling permanently in New York in 1982. Goldfarb is a naturalized American citizen.^[1] He has combined a scientific career as a microbiologist with political and public activities focused on civil liberties and human rights in Russia, in the course of which he has been associated with Andrei Sakharov, George Soros, Boris Berezovsky, and Alexander Litvinenko.^[2] He has not visited Russia since 2000.^[1]

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I would like to introduce you to one of the most amazing scientists who have ever lived. So famous, that more places on Earth have been named after him than any human being. So famous, that President Thomas Jefferson said he was the most important scientist he ever met. And Simon Bolivar called him the true discoverer of South America. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, every story on the front page of <i>The New York Times</i> was written about him. Who is this scientist and what did he do that was so extraordinary? His name is Alexander Von Humboldt. Never heard of him? Most people haven't. His name has been lost in history, but here is what he did. Alexander Von Humboldt started as a practicing geologist, but when an inheritance allowed him the freedom to travel, he began an incredible, five-year scientific journey through South America, Mexico, and Cuba. From 1799 to 1804, Von Humboldt and his botonist partner, Aime Bonpland, traveled through the jungles of Venezuela, made detailed drawings of Inca ruins while exploring the mountains of Peru, and traversed the breadth of Mexico and Cuba. He explored the length of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. This 1700 mile portion of the trip was filled with danger, disease, and fantastic new discoveries. For example, Von Humboldt was the first explorer to witness the preparation of the curare plant for poison arrows. He recognized the importance of the cinchona tree, whose bark contains quinine, which is a malaria cure, and discovered the ocean current, which limits rainfall on the coast of Peru, later named the Humboldt Current. He discovered and described many new species of plants and animals, including the electric eel. In Ecuador, he climbed the one of the highest volcanoes, Chimborazo, so that he could record air pressure, something no one had ever done at this altitude. The entire journey covered over 24,000 miles, the same distance as the circumference of the Earth. Along the way, he took measurements about the shape of the land, its temperature, the air pressure, and the strength of magnetic fields. By connecting places of identical temperatures, he created contour maps with lines of similar temperatures, which he called "isotherms". Because Humboldt invented these maps, scientists began to see patterns in the life and the types of life present in certain places, and he became a pioneer in the visual presentation of scientific data. These discoveries and measurements were critical to what made him such an important scientist. Until Humboldt, scientists who described new plants and animals did not clearly see the crucial connection between living things and the places in which they lived, called habitats. They did not appreciate the role of the environment on the diversity of life. Humboldt discovered and understood the importance of these connections. Because of this, he is considered the founder of biogeography. He also developed a theory called the "Unity of Nature," which shows the interconnectedness of all nature. This knowledge plays a vital role in the preservation and protection of our habitat. His book, <i>Cosmos</i>, describes this theory and is still in print today. As celebrated a scientist as he was, Von Humboldt was also generous, thus serving another role in the world. He was the mentor and teacher to younger scientists. In fact, just recently it was discovered the crucial role that Humboldt played in the work of his most famous pen-pal, Charles Darwin. A young Darwin read Humboldt extensively and wrote in his diary while on the Beagle, "I am at present fit only to read Humboldt. He, like another sun, illuminates everything I behold." Today, although Humboldt is known and revered by a small community of scientists, he is almost totally forgotten by many of us. Alexander Von Humboldt's influence is apparent everywhere and in every scientific discipline. He is, perhaps, the most important forgotten man of science. But he doesn't have to be, because if you remember him, perhaps his influence will be celebrated.

Scientific career

Goldfarb studied biochemistry at Moscow State University and graduated in 1969. After graduation, he worked at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow.^[3] He emigrated from the USSR in 1975. He received a Ph.D. in 1980 from the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Back in the west, he continued his research with a post-doctoral program at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. From 1982 to 1991 he was an assistant professor at Columbia University in New York.^[4] From 1992 to 2006 he was a faculty member at the Public Health Research Institute in New York where he led a U.S. government-funded study "Structure and Function of RNA Polymerase in E. coli" with a total budget of $7 million.^[5] He also directed the project "Treating Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Siberian Prisons" funded by a $13 million grant from philanthropist George Soros.^[6]

Activism

After he emigrated, Goldfarb maintained contact with dissidents in the Soviet Union and was a spokesman for Moscow refuseniks.^[7] He translated for Andrei Sakharov at press conferences in advance of his 1975 Nobel Peace Prize and helped organize the first American television appearance of Sakharov when Mikhail Gorbachev released the physicist from internal exile.^[8]^[9] From 1984 to 1986 Soviet authorities refused Goldfarb's father permission to leave the USSR after their unsuccessful attempt to make him collaborate and entrap American journalist Nicholas Daniloff.^[10]^[11]^[12]

Goldfarb was among the first political emigres to return to the Soviet Union after Gorbachev launched his reforms.^[13] Impressions of his first visit in October 1987 were published as a cover story in The New York Times magazine under the title "Testing Glasnost. An Exile Visits his Homeland".^[14]

The story caught the attention of US philanthropist George Soros, leading to a decade-long association between the two men. According to Soros' biographer Robert Slater, Goldfarb was among the first group of Russian exiles in New York whom Soros invited to brainstorm his potential Foundation in Russia.^[15] In 1991 Goldfarb persuaded Soros to donate $100 million to help former Soviet scientists survive the hardships of the economic shock therapy adopted by the Boris Yeltsin government.^[16]

From 1992 to 1995, Goldfarb was Director of Operations at Soros' International Science Foundation, which helped sustain tens of thousands of scientists and scholars in the former Soviet Union during the harshest three years of economic reform.^[17] In 1994 Goldfarb managed Soros' Russian Internet Project, which built infrastructure and provided free Internet access for university campuses across Russia.^[18] That project created a controversy because of a conflict with emerging Russian commercial interests in the ISP field.^[19] In 1995, during the first months of the First Chechen War, Goldfarb oversaw a Soros-funded relief operation, which ended disastrously with the disappearance of the American relief worker Fred Cuny.^[20] From 1998 to 2000 Goldfarb directed the $15 million Soros tuberculosis project in Russia.^[21] He worked with Dr. Paul Farmer to battle TB in Russian prisons, an endeavor described by the Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder in his book Mountains Beyond Mountains.^[22]

Since 2001 Goldfarb has been Executive Director of the New York-based International Foundation for Civil Liberties, founded and financed by the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.^[23] The fact that Goldfarb knew Berezovsky well is described in the book The age of Berezovsky, written by Petr Aven.^[24]

Involvement in the Litvinenko affair

Goldfarb first met Alexander Litvinenko during his tuberculosis project in Russian prisons. In October 2000, at the request of Boris Berezovsky, Goldfarb visited Turkey where he met Litvinenko and his family, who had just fled from Russia.^[3] Goldfarb arranged their entry to the United Kingdom, an offense under British law, for which he was banned from visiting Britain for a year.^[1] His involvement would also "cost him his job with George Soros."^[25]

When Litvinenko was poisoned in London in 2006, Goldfarb was his unofficial spokesman during the two last weeks of his life ^[26] On the day of Litvinenko's death, Goldfarb read out his deathbed statement accusing Vladimir Putin of ordering the poisoning.^[27]

Goldfarb later explained in interviews that he had drafted the statement at Litvinenko's request and that Litvinenko had signed it in the presence of a lawyer.^[1] With Berezovsky, Litvinenko's widow Marina, and the human rights lawyer Louise Christian, Goldfarb founded the Litvinenko Justice Foundation to campaign for the truth about his murder, and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. ^[28] He later testified in a libel suit, in which Berezovsky successfully contested the claim by Russian state television station RTR (now Russia 1) that he had murdered Litvinenko.^[29]^[30]

Libel lawsuit against Russian TV channels

Following the attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, UK on March 4, 2018, Russian TV network coverage of the incident named Goldfarb as the murderer of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.^[31] Goldfarb sued two Russian TV channels, Channel One Russia and RT, for libel in US.^[32] The case is pending in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.^[33] On March 4, 2020, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni denied a motion to dismiss the case, ruling that New York had personal jurisdiction over the matter because Channel One Russia maintains a Manhattan studio where correspondent Zhanna Agalakova interviewed Goldfarb in relation to the allegedly defamatory story.^[34] On April 10, 2024 Federal judge John P. Croanan awarded Goldfarb $ 25 million judgement against Channel One^[35]