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OpenBIO
We are saddened to share the news of the passing of Emeritus Professor Grigory Dianov earlier this month. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.
Prof. Grigory Dianov was the Head of Biochemistry at the CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology within the Department of Oncology until 2018. He made major contributions to the mechanistic understanding of DNA base excision repair and the maintenance of genome stability.
Prof. Dianov obtained his Doctor of Biological Sciences degree from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences at the age of 36, becoming the youngest Doctor of Biological Sciences in the country. That same year, he was awarded Lenin’s Komsomol Prize, the highest Russian award for young scientists. He continued to work at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics as a Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis until 1990.
In 1990, Prof. Dianov moved to England to work as a Senior Fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (London) with Dr Tomas Lindahl (2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for DNA Repair mechanisms), where he worked on the basic mechanisms of DNA repair and genome stability. One of his papers published jointly with Dr. Lindahl was cited in the Nobel Prize Committee’s justification for the Nobel Prize.
In 1993, Prof. Dianov moved to the United States where he continued his pioneering work on DNA repair, first as a Visiting Professor at the Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, with Dr Errol Friedberg, a leading figure in the DNA repair field, and later as a Senior Fellow with Dr Vilhelm Bohr (National Institute on Ageing, NIH, Baltimore) where he investigated the role of DNA repair in ageing.
In 2000, Prof. Dianov moved back to England to become Head of the Biochemistry Group at the Medical Research Council and in 2007 he became the Head of Biochemistry at the CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology within the Department of Oncology. He was a valued colleague and friend. Prof. Dianov retired to Switzerland in 2018 to live with his family.
Prof. Dianov will be greatly missed by his family, friends, and colleagues, and remembered for his brilliance, mentorship, and lasting contributions to the field of DNA repair and genome stability.