Yuri Svirezhev

Yuri Svirezhev, 2005

Yuri Svirezhev ( Russian Юрий Михайлович Свирежев , Juri Michailowitsch Swireschew ; born September 22, 1938 in Bulatnikowo near Murom , Vladimir Oblast ; † February 22, 2007 in Potsdam ) was a Russian physicist and ecologist.

As the son of the well-known surgeon Mikhail Swireschew (1917-1967) and the teacher Evdokia, he graduated from high school in Vladimir in 1955 . He then attended the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where he graduated in 1961 in mathematics and mechanics. He received his graduation from the same institute in 1964.

From 1964 he worked with Professor Nikolai W. Timofejew-Ressowski in Obninsk at the Institute for Medical Radiology. He also attended lectures at the Faculty of Biology at Moscow State University . With this he specialized in problems in mathematics and biology. In 1967 he won a Leopoldina Prize for his work on the genetics of populations .

From 1969 he worked as part of the Soviet space program in the Department of Biomedical Questions. He then moved to the Moscow Institute for Medical and Biological Problems in 1970, where he dealt with questions of long-term flights in space until 1976. The theories he developed for this were used in the execution of several long-term flights.

From 1972 to 1978 he worked in a US-American-Soviet group for biology and medicine in space. During these years he proposed a model of the processes of the biosphere , which was based on the concepts of the classical Russian school. This model was presented in 1979 in a publication entitled Mathematical Modeling of Global Biosphere Processes , which has long been one of the most important representations in this area.

In 1972 he obtained his PhD in Physics and Mathematics, and in 1977 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Mechanics at Moscow State University. Since 1976 he headed the newly established Mathematical Ecology Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR . From 1979 to 1985 he was a member of the SCOPE ( Scientific Committee on Problems of Environment ) advisory committee .

As part of this consultancy work, he was one of the most active members who published a study on the consequences of a nuclear war in 1985, entitled Ecological and Demographic Consequences of Nuclear War . The German edition was published in Berlin in 1991 under the title Götterdämmerung . When in the mid-1980s plans were under discussion in the Soviet Union to divert the northern rivers into the Volga and Caspian Sea , he pointed out the fundamental weaknesses of this project.

In 1989 he accepted an invitation from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to set up a group for international ecological modeling. As a result of the activities of this group, a theoretical model for the climate risks in 19 regions of Hungary was established. The Hungarian Academy honored him for this in 1991 by awarding him the Szecseny Medal .

In 1992 he accepted an invitation from Germany to head the Department for Integrated Systems Analysis at the newly founded Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , which from now on was his main activity. In 1993 he was awarded the Timofejew Resowski Medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences . He has published more than 250 papers that dealt with the topics of his work areas.

Fonts (selection)

• Mathematical Modeling of Global Biosphere Processing with W. Krapiwin and A. Tarko, Moscow 1979
• Mathematical Models in Ecology and Genetics , Moscow 1980 (Russian),
• Stability of Biological Communities with D., Logofet, Moscow 1982
• Foundations of mathematical Genetics , Moscow 1982 (Russian)
• Fundamentals of Evolutionary Mathematical Genetics with W. Pasekow, Moscow 1983, (1990)
• Non-linear Waves, Dissipative Structures and Catastrophes in Ecology , Moscow 1987
• Ecological and Demographic Consequences of a Nuclear War , Berlin 1985 ISBN 3-05-500193-1
• Fundamentals of Mathematical Evolutionary Genetics (Mathematics and its Applications)
• Towards a Thermodynamic Theory for Ecological Systems , as ed., 2004 ISBN 0-08-044166-1