Belenky Max Lvovich (1911 - 1965, Riga) - pharmacologist and Сorresponding Member of the Academy of Medical Sciences USSR (1960). He graduated from the 2nd Leningrad Medical Institute (1933) and then worked in the Department of Pharmacology there. Between 1941-45 he served as an army toxicologist. From 1952 he was Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the Riga Medical Institute. Belenky's scientific research primarily focused on the pharmacology of carotid receptors, as well as cholinergic and adrenergic processes. He put forward and substantiated a theory about adverse energy balance as a direct cause of irritation in carotid body chemoreceptors and other receptor structures. Together with his colleagues he identified and studied the adrenergic properties of apomorphine, the cholinergic component in the production of phenazine. He was a member of the leadership of the High Pharmalogical Society and an Honoured Worker of Sciences in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia (1961).

Essays: Elements of Quantities, an Assessment of the pharmacological Effect, Riga, 1959, L., 1963; The Pharmacology of Carotid Body Chemoreceptors, L., 1962 (together with S.V.Anichkov).