It was while seeking an inorganic analog of the biochemical citric acid cycle that Belousov chanced to discover an oscillating chemical reaction.

He tried twice over a period of six years to publish his findings, but the incredulous editors of the journals to which he submitted his articles rejected his work[4] as "impossible".

The biochemist Simon El'evich Shnoll, at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics in Pushchino, heard of Belousov's work and tried to encourage him to continue.

Belousov gave Shnoll some of his experimental notes and agreed to publish an article in a rather obscure, non-reviewed, journal,[5] but then essentially quit science.

Shnoll gave the project to a graduate student, Anatol Zhabotinsky, who investigated the reaction in detail and succeeded in publishing his results.