Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky

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Vladimir Vernadsky (1934)
Stamp issue for WI Vernadski's 100th birthday (Soviet Union 1963)

Vladimir Vernadsky ( Russian Владимир Иванович Вернадский * February 28 jul. / 12. March  1863 greg. In Saint Petersburg , †  6. January 1945 in Moscow ) was a Russian and Ukrainian geologist , geochemist and mineralogist, a founder of Geochemistry , radiogeology and biogeochemistry .

Vladimir Vernadsky on the Ukrainian banknote of 1000 hryvnia note

Life

Vernadsky's tomb in the Moscow Cemetery of the New Maiden Convent

The son of a liberal professor of economics studied natural sciences at the University of St. Petersburg from 1881 to 1885 . He specialized in the fields of geology and mineralogy with Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchayev . In 1888 he visited Munich and in 1889 Paris . His two-year trip also took him to Italy. From 1890 he taught as a private lecturer in mineralogy. From 1898 to 1911 he was a professor of mineralogy at Moscow's Lomonosov University .

He became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (AdW) in 1912, of which he had been an extraordinary member since 1909. In 1914 he was appointed director of the Geological and Mineralogical Museum of the AdW. In 1919 he became the first president of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine . In 1928 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .

From 1922 to 1926 he stayed in Paris, where he gave lectures on geochemistry at the Sorbonne , which were published as a book (“La geochemie”) in French in 1924 and supplemented in German in 1930. In 1926 he returned to the Soviet Union and from 1929 until his death was director of the biochemical laboratory of the AdW of the USSR . From 1939 he was also director of the State Radium Institute in Leningrad, which he founded .

meaning

Russian commemorative coin from 1993

He was the first to popularize the concept of the noosphere , i.e. the biosphere that is controlled by human consciousness. Within the last 200 years, humanity as such has become of great importance for geology , insofar as it moves more earth mass than the processes of the pure biosphere.

Vernadsky made two laws according to which

  1. the number and types of chemical elements that go into the cycle of living matter increase over time,
  2. these processes accelerate over time.

As a university lecturer, he stood up for social progress and took a critical position in the press on political problems in public life in Russia.

When the First World War broke out , he was confronted with questions about raw material problems. On his initiative, a commission for the study of natural production resources of Russia at the AdW ( KEPS ) was founded in 1915 , which was active until 1930 and mainly researched the occurrence of mineral raw materials in Russia.

After the February Revolution of 1917 he was temporarily head of department in the Ministry of Education of the Provisional Government . At the end of 1917 he moved to Kiev and the Crimea . In 1921 he returned to Petrograd. In the 1920s he worked on a commission for the history of knowledge. In 1927 he was part of the Soviet delegation of the “Russian Natural Scientists Week” in Berlin, where he gave some very well-received lectures. At the International Geological Congress in Moscow in 1937, he spoke in plenary on the role of radioactivity in geology.

Wernadski is considered to be one of the founders and theorists of geochemistry and biogeochemistry as well as the theory of the biosphere and noosphere. He also examined the structure of silicates , the role of organisms in geochemical processes and the radioactivity of minerals . His investigations also focused on the geochemistry of rare and disperse elements, the clarification of geochemical phenomena and processes such as geothermal heat with the help of radioactivity and the determination of the absolute age of rocks.

From dynamic mineralogy, Wernadski and his student Fersman developed geochemistry as a separate branch of science. From 1922 he dealt with the chemical composition of organic substances, the sequence and effects of geochemical processes in which organisms are involved, and thus founded biogeochemistry. In 1942 he published the theory of geological envelopes ( geospheres or earth spheres ) developed from the system of geochemical cycles as a synthesis of his ideas about the planet earth and the fundamentals of its geochemical and biological structure .

Logically, he developed this further through studies of geoecology. He developed the theory of the biosphere , discovered the negentropic factor in nature and coined the term noosphere in its de-theologized form. Vernadski's importance for geosciences is often compared to Darwin's role for biology :

"Wernadski has done for space what Darwin did for time: While Darwin documented that all life descends from a distant ancestor, Wernadski showed that all life occupies a materially uniform space, the biosphere". ( Lynn Margulis )

Among his students were Alexander Fersman , Vitaly Chlopin and Alexander Vinogradov , who contributed greatly to the popularization and further development of his research.

The asteroid (2809) Vernadsky , the Vernadskovo Prospect in Moscow ( western administrative district ), the Vernadsky National Library and the National Tauride Vernadsky University in Ukraine are named after Vernadsky. Ukraine has been operating the Vernadsky Station in the Southern Ocean since 1996 . Since 1965 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR has awarded the Vernadsky Gold Medal for outstanding achievements in the field of geosciences. Since 1993 this medal has been awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Publications

  • Kratki course mineralogi, schitani studentam-medikam 1891-1892 , Moscow 1891
  • Ob izuscheni estestvennih proizwoditelnih sil Rossii , in: Izvestija Akad. Nauk, 6 ser., 9 (1915), 8, 679-700
  • La geochemie , Paris 1924
  • Geochemistry in selected chapters , Authorized translation from Russian by Dr. E. Kordes, Leipzig 1930
  • O nekotorih osnownih problema biogeochemii , in: Iswestija Akad. Nauk SSSR ser geol. 18: 1, 19-34 (1938)
  • O nasschenii radiologii dlja sovremennoi geologii , in: Trudi 17 sessii Meschdunarodnowo geolog. Kongressa SSSR 1937 (Moscow 1939)
  • O geologischeski oboloschkah zemli kak planeti , in: Izvestia Akad. Nauk SSSR, ser. geogr. geofis. (1942) 6, 251-262
  • Neskolko slow o noosfere , in: Uspechi biologii 18 (1944) 2, 113-120
  • Rasmyschlenija naturalista , Moscow 1977
  • Zivoye wesestwo , Moscow 1978
  • Filisowkije mysli natguralista , Moscow 1988
  • Trudy po wseobschej istorii nauki , Moscow 1988
  • Trudy po istorii nauki w Rossii , Moscow 1988
  • Isbrannije trudy - Kristallografija , Moscow 1988

English language translations:

  • 1924: Geochemistry
  • 1926: Biosfera ; engl. Translated from: The Biosphere , Copernicus Books, Springer Verlag, New York 1998, ISBN 0-387-98268-X

literature

  • Peter Krüger: Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky . In: Biographies of outstanding natural scientists, technicians and doctors . 1st edition. tape 55 . Teubner, Leipzig 1981, ISBN 3-322-00571-2 .
  • Vladimir Ivanovič Vernadskij [Wladimir Iwanowitsch Vernadskij]: Man in the biosphere . To the natural history of reason. Ed .: Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / New York / Paris / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-631-49084-4 (Original title: Биосфера [Biosfera] . Translated by Felix Eder, Peter Krüger, English by Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York NY 1998, ISBN 0-387-98268-X ).
  • Georgy S. Levit: Biogeochemistry - Biosphere - Noosphere . The growth of the theoretical system of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. In: Studies on the theory of biology . tape 4 . VWB, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86135-351-2 (English).

Web links

Commons : Wladimir Wernadski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky - Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ↑ Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich ( Memento January 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) - The Oxford Companion to the Earth
  3. ^ Vernadsky, Vladímir Ivanovich - Environmental Encyclopedia
  4. ↑ Honoring Vladimir Vernadsky: Russian-Ukrainian Scientist's 150th Year Wraps Up. February 3, 2015, accessed October 2, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. Retrieved October 2, 2019 (UK English).
  6. ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter V. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 11, 2020 (French).
  7. ^ Levit, George S .: Biochemistry - Biosphere - Noosphere: The Growth of the Theoretical System of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky
  8. ↑ Vernadsky gold medal. Russian Золотая медаль имени В.И. Вернадского . Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed May 16, 2018 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Вернадский, Владимир Иванович (Russian); Vernadskij, Vladimir Ivanovič
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian geologist, geochemist and mineralogist, one of the founders of geochemistry, radiogeology and biogeochemistry
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1945
Place of death Moscow