Alexander Scriabine, 87, of Guilford, husband of 48 years to Christine Brendel Scriabine, died June 25. He was born in October of 1926 in Leningrad, USSR (St. Petersburg, Russia) to the late Konstantin and Elena Scriabine.

Alex spent his first eight years at home with his beloved grandmother who taught him French and German in addition to the normal school subjects. In June of 1941, Germany invaded Russia. By September, the German Army had surrounded the city on three sides and began to starve it out. Alex, who had just finished the eighth grade, did not return to school for the next four years.

The people of the city slowly starved and froze to death ( over1 million would die before the siege was lifted). By the end of the year, the tall, thin adolescent was entering the final stages of starvation. When almost beyond help, his father managed to put him a place in one of the first military medical convoys that went east on the newly created ice road across the frozen Lake Ladoga. The rest of the family initially stayed behind.

A military hospital train took him east to the Urals. The nurses and soldiers on the train transfused him with their own blood because he was beyond eating. His mother and brother were evacuated a few weeks later and his devoted mother began crisscrossing Russia searching for her son. By luck, or divine intervention, she found him. They then proceeded to their assigned evacuation destination in the Caucasus.

Less than a year later the Germans overran the Caucasus area, and they were in German hands. Since Alex and his mother were trilingual, they were made to translate for the Germans and when the Germans retreated a few months later, they forced the family to go with them. For the next two years Alex was a forced laborer and translator in mines, slaughterhouses and steel mills, reading and studying whenever he was not totally exhausted.

When the war ended, he crammed and was accepted to study medicine at the University of Mainz, but he soon ran out of money. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1950 not speaking any English but eventually got a job in a pharmacology lab at Cornell. By studying at night he earned a M.A in Pharmacology from Cornell and began working at Pfizer in New Jersey. After a few years, Pfizer paid for him to return to Germany and finish his M.D. degree.

At Pfizer he discovered the activity of two major drugs (Renese and Minipress) and worked on a number of other drugs that would be marketed. Since he always wanted to try the academic life, he left Pfizer for the University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia General Hospital. In 1967, he went to the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research and became the Executive Director of Pharmacology where he would direct research on five marketed drugs. In 1979, he became the director of the Miles Institute for Preclinical Pharmacology and a lecturer at the Yale Medical School.

Alex was a member of a number of scientific societies and edited a number of journals, His complete bibliography lists 212 publications including 14 books and 34 book chapters.

Alex leaves behind his wife of 48 years, a daughter Raisa Scriabine of Potomac, Maryland, a grandson Alexander Smith of Paris, France, and a son Nicholas Scriabine of City Beach, Western Australia and his two children Natalie and Laura. His brother George predeceased him.

A memorial service will be held at 10a.m. on July 23 at the First Congregational Church in Guilford.

In lieu of flowers please donate to the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis, 10866 W. Washington Blvd #343, Culver City, CA 90232 or Doctors without Borders. To share a memory or leave a message of condolence for the family, please visit: www.GuilfordFuneralHome.com