Alexander Borodin: The Chemist Who Won a Tony Award

Imagine winning a Tony Award for a hit Broadway musical, except you have been dead for nearly 70 years and were never even a full-time composer. Your day job was pioneering organic chemistry, and you only wrote music on sick days and holidays.This episode tells the astonishing story of Alexander Borodin, the 19th-century polymath who co-discovered foundational chemical reactions while simultaneously composing some of Russia's most beloved music. We trace his life from a legally erased birth to a posthumous Broadway triumph, exploring how dividing his attention may have fueled his genius rather than hindering it.His birth as the illegitimate son of a Georgian nobleman, legally registered as a serf belonging to his own fatherHis chemistry breakthroughs, including the Hunsdiecker-Borodin reaction and his co-discovery of the Aldol reactionWhy he called himself a Sunday composer and felt guilty making music instead of advancing scienceHis role in The Five and the unfinished epic opera Prince Igor, completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov after his sudden deathHow Prince Igor became the 1953 Broadway hit Kismet, earning him a posthumous Tony for songs like Stranger in Paradise