Sveta was born on February 5, 1939 in the village of Kupchintsi in Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine. She grew up with her mother, Evgeniya, a schoolteacher, her older brother Evgeniy (Zhenya), and her younger sister Aleksandra (Lesia). She never knew her father, Nikifor, who went missing in action during World War II. Some of her earliest memories were living under Nazi occupation and helping her mother manage the household, tend to the farm animals, and raise her younger sister. After the war, the family relocated to Valerik, a village in Chechnya.
Upon finishing schooling, Sveta wanted to be a surgeon and applied to several medical schools, without luck. She eventually changed her mind and in 1959 applied to the newly created department of biochemistry at the Moscow State University. In the interim she held several jobs, including a newspaper correspondent in Siberia. Sveta graduated in 1964, working first at the Institute of Biophysics in Pushchino, Moscow Oblast, and then returning back to Moscow for graduate studies at the Vitaminnyy Institute in 1971, where she received the doctoral degree of Candidate of Sciences in 1975.
She then worked at the Institute of Crystallography, focusing on the growth of protein crystals, which could then be studied under diffraction to understand the structure and function of these building blocks of nature, including Aspartate transaminase (AST), and human growth hormone (hGH). Her work gained international recognition, with a variety of published articles, including in the premier scientific journal Nature.
Sveta’s dedication to science was matched by her dedication to her family. She married Vsevolod Borisovin 1967 and together they welcomed the birth of their daughter Maia in 1968 and son Nikita in 1977. She imparted her love of education and life-long learning on both her children, though perhaps not her love of natural sciences, as both Maia and Nikita received their undergraduate degrees in computer science instead.
Sveta’s work at the Institute of Crystallography also involved growing crystals in the microgravity of orbiting space stations, which garnered the attention of several international research groups, including, fatefully, one at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. She moved there for an extended research visit with Nikita in 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. She stayed in Ottawa while Nikita was in high school, and then moved to the NRC Biotechnology Research Institute in Montreal to support him as he went to university. During this time they gained first permanent residence in Canada and later Canadian citizenship. In 1998 she moved back to Ottawa, working with Prof. Stephen Evans at the University of Ottawa, and then moved with his research group to the University of Victoria in 2002, from where she retired in 2009. During this time she continued her work with microgravity, sending up experiments on the Space Shuttle and to the Space Station Mir, and working on important proteins, including hemoglobin and ABO(H) blood group antigens. The most recent scientific article based on her work was published in 2018.
Upon retirement, Sveta moved to Toronto, where Maia and children called home. She spent her time visiting with her family, scattered around the world—Nikita in Illinois, Lesia and Zhenya in Odessa, and other family and friends in Moscow. When she couldn’t visit, she still kept track of everybody; on a phone call she could usually tell you your local weather better than you could. Sveta loved to cook and delighted family and friends alike with her borscht, tvorozhniki, cherry vareniki, and apricot jam.
Friends and family remember Sveta’s indomitable spirit, which could be seen in her decisions to apply to the premier university in the Soviet Union despite her country upbringing, to move halfway across the world despite not knowing English, or simply to renovate her Moscow apartment on her own, and her kind heart—it was impossible to leave Sveta’s apartment without some food to take along with you, at a minimum an apple. Sveta touched many lives and will be missed.
Sveta is survived by her children, Maia Buterin and Nikita (Lenore) Borisov, 5 grandchildren, and her sister Aleksandra (Aleksandr) Basanko. Donations in her name may be made to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. https://curealz.org/
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.jerrettfuneralhome.ca for the Borissova family.
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