Alexander Goldfarb (microbiologist)

Alexander Goldfarb (born in 1947 in Moscow) is a Russian microbiologist and activist.

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Goldfarb studied biochemistry at the Moscow State University in the 1960s. After graduation, he worked in Kurchatov Research Institute of Nuclear Energy.

He emigrated from the USSR in 1975 and lived in Israel where he received his Ph.D from Weizmann Institute in Tel Aviv and in Germany, where he had his post-doctoral training in Max Planck Institute.^[1]

He became known in the 1980s for his helping refuseniks to defect from the USSR while working as an assistant professor at Columbia University in New York.^[2]

From 1993 to 1997 he managed the Soros Foundation in Russia. He has worked with Dr. Paul Farmer to battle tuberculosis in Russian prisons from 1997 to 2000.

Since 2001, Goldfarb heads the International Foundation for Civil Liberties established by Boris Berezovsky in New York.

Goldfarb helped Alexander Litvinenko to leave Russia ^[3] and prepare the book Lubyanka Criminal Group for publication.^[4] Goldfarb was a spokesman for Alexander Litvinenko during the two last weeks of his life. He later wrote and published book "Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB" together with Marina Litvinenko.

References

His books

• Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB. Free Press, New York, 2007. ISBN 978-1416551652.

Books mentioning Goldfarb

• Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 2005 edition: ISBN 0-520-24326-9
• Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, Random House, 2003 hardcover: ISBN 0-375-50616-0, 2004 paperback: ISBN 0-8129-7301-1