Alexander Leonidowitsch Tschischewski

2 rubles - silver coin of the Rossii Bank for the 100th birthday of Alexander Leonidowitsch Tschischewskis (reverse)

Alexander Leonidovich Tschischewski ( Russian Александр Леонидович Чижевский ; born January 26 ^{. Jul} / 7. February  1897 ^greg. In Ciechanowiec , Grodno ; † 20th December 1964 in Moscow ) was a Soviet biophysicist , poet and painter .

Life

Tschischewski's father Leonid Wassiljewitsch Tschischewski (1861–1929) was an artillery officer and inventor (angle measurement from a concealed position, destruction of wire fences). Tschischewskis mother Nadezhda Alexandrovna nee Neviandt (1875-1898) was the sister of the Dragoon officer and later State Duma deputy Konstantin Alexandrowitsch Neviandt , niece of Major General Alexei Petrovich Delssal and cousin of General Pyotr Alexejewitsch Delssal . After the early death of his mother Tschischewski grew up with his aunt Olga Wassiljewna Tschischewskaja-Lesli (1863-1927) and his grandmother Jelisaveta Semjonovna Tschischewskaja nee Oblachinskaya (1828-1908, great niece of Admiral Pavel Stepanowitsch Nachimow ).

Tschischewski received a home education with lessons in foreign languages, history and music. At the age of 7 he took private lessons from Edgar Degas ' student Gustave Nodier at the Paris Académie des Beaux-Arts . In 1907 he entered the boys high school in Białystok . After his father was transferred to the fortress Zegrze near Serock , Tschischewski received home schooling again. From January 1914 to April 1915 he attended the private Schachmagonow Realschule in Kaluga for graduation. He spoke French , German , English and Italian . Close contact with Konstantin Eduardowitsch Ziolkowski was established in Kaluga , which later resulted in constant scientific cooperation and mutual support.

In July 1915, Chishevsky was accepted as a student at the Moscow Trade Institute . In September 1915 he switched to the Moscow Archaeological Institute as a guest student . However, he went to the front as a volunteer and took part in the fighting in Galicia in the second half of 1916 and from May to September 1917 . After being wounded, he was demobilized and received the Georgskreuz IV class.

In 1917 Tschischewski graduated from the Moscow Archaeological Institute and in May of the same year defended his dissertation on Russian poetry of the 18th century and Michail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow . In December of the same year he defended his thesis on the evolution of physico - mathematical sciences in antiquity for promotion to master the general history . He was now a research fellow at the Moscow Archaeological Institute.

In 1918, after the October Revolution , Tschischewski defended his dissertation on the periodicity of worldwide historical processes in the historical - philological faculty of Moscow University for the doctorate in general history. He was a guest student at the physical-mathematical faculty in the natural science department and at the medical faculty of Moscow University and heard lectures at the Urban Moscow Schanjawski - people's University .

In 1918 Tschischewski went to Kaluga and gave lessons in the courses of the Red Infantry Commanders founded and then led by his father (until 1920) and then at the 4th Soviet Workers' Unit School (until 1921). As early as 1915 Tschischewski had been working on heliobiology in his father's house , which deals with the influence of the sun on the biosphere . Starting in 1918, he carried out initial experiments for three years to investigate the effects of ionized air on living organisms. According to his results, positively charged air ions had a negative effect on living organisms, while negatively charged air ions had a positive effect. He reported on this in the Kaluga Natural History Society . Through this report he came into contact with the physicist Pyotr Petrovich Lasarew . In December 1921 he wrote a thesis on the beginning of the universe , the system of the cosmos and its problems. He was one of the representatives of cosmism .

Tschischewski also worked as a landscape painter in Kaluga and sold more than 100 pictures, mostly watercolors , to finance his experiments. In addition, he published his poems , which he had written since childhood, as well as translations of poems, for example by Ludwig Uhland . On the recommendation of Anatoly Wassiljewitsch Lunacharsky, he became an instructor of the literary department of the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR , whereupon he was elected chairman of the Poets' Union of Kaluga Governorate .

In 1921 Tschischewski became a professor at the Moscow Archaeological Institute. From 1922 to 1923 Tschischewski was an unscheduled scientific advisor to the Institute of Physics and Biophysics of the People's Commissariat for Health of the USSR , where he became acquainted with Sergei Ivanovich Vawilow . Tschischewski's acquaintances also included the writers Leonid Nikolajewitsch Andrejew , Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin , Alexei Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy , Igor Severyanin , Sergei Alexandrowitsch Jessenin , Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky , Ivan Alexeyevich Jakov , Maxim Gorkovich and Valeriyovsky . Tschischewski was friends with the composer Nikolai Petrovich Rakov . He attended the literary salon of Al Holmberg ( Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's granddaughter) and the music evenings of TF Dostoyevskaya ( Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostoyevsky's great niece).

1924 appeared in Kaluga Tschischewskis fundamental work on the physical factors of historical processes. In the same year in Moscow he became a senior researcher (with the rank of professor) in the Laboratory of Practical Animal Psychology of the Main Science Administration of the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR. Here he carried out experiments to study the biological and physiological effects of air ions on animals. In 1927 he designed a special ionizer for this purpose . He was in contact with Svante Arrhenius , Fridtjof Nansen , Charles Richet and Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval . He was invited to lectures in Paris and New York . He did not sell his rights to his inventions and discoveries to foreign buyers, but left them to the Soviet government.

In 1931 Tschischewski became head of the Central Research Laboratory for Ionification (ZNILI) in the Research Institute for Animal Breeding of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Voronezh, which was founded at the instigation of the People's Commissar for Agriculture Yakov Arkadyevich Yakovlev . To this end, he founded a test station at the poultry trust . The work results were published regularly and also translated into other languages. After criticism of this work, in particular by the biologist Boris Michailowitsch Sawadowski , who called Tschischewski a charlatan , the People's Commissariat for Agriculture banned further publications in January 1933 and dismissed Tschischewski in 1936 with the dissolution of the ZNILI. Abram Fjodorowitsch Joffe stated in his research report in 1940 that Tschischewski's hypotheses were based on unconsciously or deliberately falsified test results, especially since he lacked the basic physical and biological knowledge for the necessary scientific tests, and that his dismissal as scientific director was justified.

At the end of 1938 Tschischewski was employed again as scientific director for air ionification of the planned Palace of the Soviets . 1939–1941 he headed the two laboratories for air ionification at the chair for general and experimental hygiene of the 3rd Moscow State Medical Institute and at the Leningrad Pedagogical . Institute

In 1941 Tschischewski moved with his family to Chelyabinsk at the beginning of the German-Soviet War . He was arrested on January 22, 1942 and sentenced on March 20, 1943 under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to 8 years in camp , which he spent in camps in the Urals and Kazakhstan and finally in the StepLag . In the camps he worked scientifically, composed more than 100 poems and painted. In the KarLag he set up a cabinet for air ionification. After his release from camp custody in January 1950, he was placed in a settlement in Karaganda , which he was able to leave in June 1954. He now lived in Karaganda and worked as an air therapy consultant and head of a blood analysis laboratory at the Karaganda Oblast Medical Center. After his return to Moscow, he worked for the sanitary engineering company SoyuzSanTechnik from 1958 to 1961 as a consultant for air therapy and laboratory manager. His work in Karaganda has now been published. In 1962 he was partially rehabilitated (and fully only after his death). In his last years he worked on his memories of the years of friendship with Tsiolkovsky, whose daughter Marija Konstantinovna Tsiolkovskaya-Kostinaja he repeatedly visited in Kaluga.

Tschischewski's name bears the asteroid (3113) Chizhevskij, discovered in 1978 by Nikolai Stepanowitsch Tschernych . In 2012, a Tschischewski monument was erected in front of the building of the Tsiolkovsky State Pedagogical University in Kaluga. In 2013, at the European Space Weather Week, Dr. Gaël Cessateur was awarded the International Alexander Chizhevsky medal for Space Weather and Space Climate .

Web links

• Literature by and about Alexander Leonidowitsch Tschischewski in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} НОВОСТИ «ВЕКА ПЕРЕВОДА»: АЛЕКСАНДР ЧИЖЕВСКИЙ (accessed on September 3, 2019).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Biography of Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (accessed September 3, 2019).
3. ↑ Алексей Манакин, Людмила Энгельгардт: Леонардо да Винчи XX века Архивная копия . In: Наш современник . No. 11 , 2002 ( Леонардо да Винчи XX века Архивная копия ( memento of March 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) [accessed September 4, 2019]).
4. ↑ Куры Чижевского (accessed September 4, 2019).
5. ↑ AL Tchijevsky: L'aeroionisation comme facteur physiologique, prophylactique et therapeutique, et comme un nouvel element sanitaire-hygienique de l'air conditionne . Mercators Tryckeri, Helsingfors 1938.
6. ↑ Памятник А.Л. Чижевскому в Калуге открыт! (accessed on September 4, 2019).
7. ↑ Medal Award (accessed September 4, 2019).