Alexander Mikhaylovich Butlerov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Бу́тлеров; 15 September 1828 – 17 August 1886) was a Russian chemist, one of the principal creators of the theory of chemical structure (1857–1861), the first to incorporate double bonds into structural formulas, the discoverer of hexamine (1859), the discoverer of formaldehyde (1859) and the discoverer of the formose reaction (1861).

He first proposed the idea of possible tetrahedral arrangement of valence bonds in carbon compounds in 1862.

In 1956 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR established the A. M. Butlerov Prize.

[1] Butlerov was the chairman of the Chemistry Department of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society from 1878 to 1882.

[1] Media related to Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Butlerov at Wikimedia Commons