Institute of Molecular biology (IMB): History
 

IMB began as a laboratory of Cytology and Cytochemistry, at the Institute of Applied and Developmental Biology founded by Acad. Dontcho Kostov in 1947, later on this laboratory becomes a division of the Institute of Biology headed by Acad. Metody Popov. In 1960it is transformed into Central Laboratory of Biochemistry (CLB) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), with its first director Prof. Roumen Tsanev.

In 1973 CLB is transformed into Institute of Biochemistry, which is renamed in 1979 as Institute of Molecular Biology. Prof. R. Tsanev (later on Acad. R.Tsanev) is both the founder and director of IMB until 1993. After his retirement, the IMB is headed consecutively by Prof. George Russev (1993-2003) and Prof. Ivan Ivanov (2003- ). At its early days IMB attracted the most enthusiastic and pronounced Bulgarian biochemists and biologists (A.Hadjiolov, G. Markov, G. Saev, T. Nikolov, A. Spasov, etc.) to study structure and biological functions of nuclear acids and cellular organelles. Being the first molecular biologists they disseminated knowledge at national level and prepared the second generation of specialists in the field of molecular biology (E. Golovinski, G. Russev, I. Pashev, I. Ivanov, P. Vencov, D.Staynov, B. Belchev, G. Dessev, M. Daleva, L. Djondjonov, L. Dolapchiev, N. Spasovska, L.Karagesov, G. Milchev, P. Petrov, M. Spasova, etc.) some of which are still active in the country or abroad.