Birshtein was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in 1928.
[2] Birshtein specialised in the theoretical physics of polymers in Saint Petersburg at the Institute of Macromolecular Compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
This institution had been created as part of Professor Mikhail Volkenstein's 1950s Leningrad school of polymer science.
The institution was synonymous with Birshtein and she is said to have dedicated her life to science.
The award was for her "contribution to the understanding of the shapes, sizes and motions of large molecules.