Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev(May 22 (June 3), St. Petersburg - April 28, Moscow) - Russian naturalist, specialist in plant physiology, major researcher of photosynthesis, one of the first propagandists of Darwin's ideas about evolution in Russia, popularizer and historian of science, honored professor of Moscow University .

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Biography

A family

Father Arkady Semyonovich, who in his youth took part in the foreign campaigns of 1812-1814, was known for his freethinking and honesty. During a brilliant career in the customs service, he did not accumulate a fortune, in connection with which, from the age of 15, Clement himself earned a living. He received his primary education at home.

Thanks to an English mother from an Alsatian family, not only was he fluent in German and international language nobility - French - but he knew the language and culture of Russians and English equally well. He wrote about himself like this: "I am Russian, although a significant proportion of English is mixed with my Russian blood." He often visited the homeland of his ancestors, met personally with Darwin, together with him contributed to the formation in Great Britain of plant physiology that had not been studied there before, was proud that, thanks to their cooperation, Darwin's last work was devoted to chlorophyll.

A huge influence on K. A. Timiryazev was exerted by his brothers Vasily and Nikolai, who especially introduced him to classes organic chemistry Dmitry Timiryazev, statistician and chemist, who worked, among other things, on chlorophyll. Another (half-blooded) brother Ivan was the father of Minister of Trade V. I. Timiryazev.

The wife of Kliment Arkadyevich, Alexandra Alekseevna Gotvalt (1857-1943), was the daughter of Major General Alexei Alexandrovich Loveiko (1829-79), who served as a police chief in Moscow. Adopted son - physicist Arkady Timiryazev. Thanks to the connections of relatives, in 1888 he managed to legitimize his illegitimate son Arkady, who, according to the official point of view, ended up in the Timiryazevs' house as a "foundling". The Timiryazev father and son, who were fond of photography, received at a competition in Nizhny Novgorod "a silver diploma for a series of excellent black-and-white transparencies depicting the nature of the middle lane, the Gulf of Finland, Italy".

Education

In 1860, K. A. Timiryazev entered St. Petersburg University to study the cameral category of the Faculty of Law, which was transformed in the same year into the category of administrative sciences and subsequently liquidated according to the Charter of 1863, then switched to the natural category of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, was awarded a gold medal for the essay "On liver mosses" (not published), he graduated from the course in 1866 with a candidate's degree. In 1861, he was expelled from the university for participating in student unrest and refusing to cooperate with the police. He was allowed to continue his studies at the university only as a volunteer after a year.

In 1867, on behalf of D. I. Mendeleev, he was in charge of an experimental agrochemical station in the Simbirsk province, at that time, long before V. I. Lenin and G. V. Plekhanov, he got acquainted with Marx's Capital in the original. He believed that, unlike the Marxists, he was a supporter of Karl Marx himself. In 1868 his first book appeared in print. treatise“A device for studying the decomposition of carbon dioxide”, and in the same year Timiryazev was sent abroad to prepare for a professorship. He worked with W. Hofmeister, R. Bunsen, G. Kirchhoff, M. Berthelot and listened to lectures by G. Helmholtz, J. Bussengo, K. Bernard and others.

Professor of the Petrovsky Academy

Returning to Russia, Timiryazev defended his master's thesis (“Spectral analysis of chlorophyll”, 1871) and was appointed professor of the Petrovskaya agricultural and forest academy in the Petrovskoye-Razumovskoye estate near Moscow. Here he lectured in all departments of botany, until he was left behind due to the closure of the academy (in 1892). In 1875, Timiryazev received a doctorate in botany for his essay "On the Assimilation of Light by a Plant." One of the students of the academy, V. G. Korolenko, brought Timiryazev in his story "From Two Sides" under the name of Professor Izborsky:

Timiryazev had special sympathetic threads that connected him with students, although very often his conversations outside the lecture turned into disputes on subjects outside the specialty. We felt that the questions that occupied us also interested him. In addition, true, ardent faith was heard in his nervous speech. It related to science and culture, which he defended against the wave of “forgiveness” that swept over us, and there was a lot of sublime sincerity in this faith. The youth appreciated it.

at Moscow University

In 1877, Timiryazev was invited to the Moscow University to the Department of Anatomy and Physiology of Plants. In 1884-1911, 1917-1920 he was an ordinary professor at the Department of Botany of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Honored Professor of Moscow University (1902) .

Co-founder and teacher of women's "collective courses" (courses of Professor V.I. Gerrier, Moscow higher women's courses, which laid the foundation for higher women's education in Russia and stood at the origins of the Darwin Museum, Russian National Research Medical University N.I. Pirogov, Moscow State University  fine chemical technologies named after M. V. Lomonosov, Moscow State Pedagogical University).

In addition, Timiryazev was the chairman of the botanical department of the Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Ethnography and Anthropology at Moscow University.

Leaving Moscow University. public position

After a cerebral hemorrhage in 1909, Timiryazev was left paralyzed. left hand and leg. Although the seriously ill scientist had no other sources of income, in 1911 he left the university along with about 130 teachers, protesting against the oppression of students and the reactionary policy of the Minister of Education Kasso. On the occasion of Timiryazev's 70th birthday on May 22, 1913, I. P. Pavlov described his colleague as follows:

Like Darwin, Timiryazev sincerely strove for the convergence of science and, as it then seemed to him, based on reason and the liberation of the liberal policy of Russia (especially his nephew) and Great Britain, since he considered both the conservatives and Bismarck and the German militarists who followed his course as enemies of the interests and common people England, and the Slavs, for whom his brothers fought, welcomed the Russian-Turkish war for the liberation of the Slavs and, at first, the Entente and Russia's action in defense of Serbia.

Already in 1914, having become disillusioned with the world slaughter, a year later Timiryazev accepted Gorky's invitation to head the department of science in the anti-war journal Chronicle, largely thanks to Timiryazev who attracted his fellow physiologists to direct or indirect participation. Nobel laureates Ilya Mechnikov, Ivan Pavlov, and cultural figures - Alexander Blok (grandson of the "dear and beloved teacher" K. A. Timiryazev Andrei Beketov), ​​Ivan Bunin, Valery Bryusov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergey Yesenin, Larisa Rein Reisner, Yanissa Baak Jack London, Herbert Wells, Anatole France, and socialists of different parties and directions.

Scientific work

Scientific works of Timiryazev, distinguished by the unity of plan, strict sequence, accuracy of methods and elegance experimental technique, are devoted to drought resistance of plants, issues of plant nutrition, in particular, the decomposition of atmospheric carbon dioxide by green plants under the influence of solar energy, and contributed to the understanding of this most important and most interesting chapter of plant physiology. The study of the composition and optical properties of the green pigment of plants (chlorophyll), its origin, physical and chemical conditions decomposition of carbon dioxide, definition constituent parts of the solar ray taking part in this phenomenon, elucidation of the fate of these rays in the plant, and, finally, the study of the quantitative relationship between the absorbed energy and the work done - these are the tasks outlined in the first works of Timiryazev and largely resolved in his subsequent works. The absorption spectra of chlorophyll were studied by K. A. Timiryazev, who, developing Mayer's provisions on the role of chlorophyll in converting the energy of the sun's rays into energy chemical bonds organic matter, showed exactly how this happens: the red part of the spectrum creates high-energy C-C instead of weak C-O and O-H bonds (before that, it was believed that photosynthesis uses the brightest yellow rays in the spectrum of sunlight, in fact, as shown Timiryazev, almost not absorbed by leaf pigments). This was done thanks to the method created by K. A. Timiryazev for accounting for photosynthesis by absorbed CO2, in the course of experiments on illuminating a plant with light of different wavelengths (of different colors), it turned out that the intensity of photosynthesis coincides with the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll. In addition, he found a different efficiency of absorption by chlorophyll of all rays of the spectrum with a consistent decrease as the wavelength decreases. Timiryazev suggested that the light-trapping function of chlorophyll evolved first in seaweed, which is indirectly confirmed by the greatest variety of pigments absorbing solar energy in this particular group of living beings, his teacher Academician Famintsyn developed this idea by the hypothesis of the origin of all plants from the symbiosis of such algae, which were transformed into chloroplasts with other organisms. Timiryazev summed up his long-term studies of photosynthesis in the Kronian lecture "The Cosmic Role of the Plant", read at the Royal Society of London in 1903. Timiryazev establishes an extremely important position that assimilation only at relatively low light voltages increases in proportion to the amount of light, but then lags behind it and reaches a maximum "at a voltage approximately equal to half the voltage of a solar beam incident on a sheet in the normal direction." A further increase in tension is no longer accompanied by an increase in the assimilation of light. On a bright sunny day, the plant receives an excess of light, causing a harmful waste of water and even overheating of the leaf. Therefore, the position of the leaves in many plants is an edge to the light, especially pronounced in the so-called "compass plants". The path to drought-resistant agriculture is the selection and cultivation of plants with a powerful root system and reduced transpiration. In his last article, K. A. Timiryazev wrote:

Timiryazev studied in detail not only the problems of plant physiology, plant assimilation of light, water, soil nutrients, fertilizers, problems general biology, botany, ecology. He considered it necessary to dispel speculation about the dry pedantry of eccentric professors and especially botanists, he was well versed not only in photography, “ necessary for everyone who does not have Shishkin’s brush”, but also in painting, translated a book about the famous painter Turner, but still as a scientist - the naturalist could not resist and wrote to her an introductory article of great value "Landscape and natural science".

Controversy with the "Mendelians"

Timiryazev recognized the "tremendous significance" of the results of G. Mendel himself and "Mendelism", actively used "Mendelism", regretting that Mendel published his works "in an unknown journal" and did not turn to Charles Darwin in time - then they would surely have been with Darwin he was supported during his lifetime, "like hundreds of others". Timiryazev emphasized that, although late (not earlier than 1881) he got acquainted with the works of Mendel, he did it much earlier than both the Mendelists and the Mendelians, and categorically denied the “Mendelianism” opposite to Mendelism - the transfer of the laws of inheritance of some simple traits of peas to the inheritance of those traits , which, according to the works of both Mendel and the Mendelists, do not and cannot obey these laws. He emphasized that Mendel, as a "serious researcher" "could never have become a Mendelian." In the article "Mendel" for the "Garnet" dictionary, Timiryazev wrote about the clerical and nationalist activities of contemporary anti-Darwinists - supporters of this Mendelianism, which distorts the teachings of Mendelism and the laws of G. Mendel:

The research recipe was extremely simple: do cross-pollination (which every gardener can do), then calculate in the second generation how many were born in one parent, how many in the other, and if, approximately, like 3: 1, the work is ready; and then glorify the genius of Mendel and, without fail hitting Darwin along the way, take on another. In Germany, the anti-Darwinist movement did not develop on clerical ground alone. An outbreak of narrow nationalism, a hatred of everything English and an exaltation of German, provided even stronger support. This difference in points of departure was even expressed in relation to Mendel's personality itself. While the cleric Batson takes special care to clear Mendel of any suspicion of Jewish origin (an attitude that until recently was unthinkable in an educated Englishman), he was especially dear to the German biographer, as "Ein Deutscher von echtem Schrot und Korn" (" A real, genuine German". Ed.). The future historian of science will probably see with regret this intrusion of the clerical and nationalist element into the brightest area of ​​human activity, which has as its goal only the disclosure of truth and its protection from all unworthy intrusions.

In the 1930s-1950s. Trofim Lysenko reproduced these quotations taken out of context from the works of Timiryazev in his speeches. In particular, in the report of June 3, “K. A. Timiryazev and the tasks of our agrobiology” at the solemn meeting of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of K. A. Timiryazev in the Moscow House of Scientists, Lysenko cited these statements of Timiryazev, calling Mendelian genetics “false science”.

The senselessness of Mendelianism and the arguments of the German nationalists against the Anglo-Saxon and Slavic theory Timiryazev also saw evolution in the fact that Gregor Mendel himself stood on the shoulders of titans: Timiryazev’s relatives, the British breeders Gardners and Darwins, and, unlike the Mendelians, he recognized this and conscientiously referred to his “bad-blooded” predecessors. Timiryazev emphasizes the pseudoscientific nature of Mendelianism and the lack of a real connection with Mendelism by the fact that, disappointed by such, in their opinion, Mendel's unscrupulousness in the problems of race, the Mendelians often renounced him and called Mendeleev their leader.

K. A. Timiryazev did not deny the rationality of some of the ideas of J.-B. Lamarck: in particular, he emphasized that Darwin, completely denying the main principle of Lamarck about the participation of mental and volitional acts in adaptation to the environment, always recognized the dependence of life forms on the environment. Timiryazev joined the position of the English philosopher and sociologist H. Spencer (1820-1903), who argued: “Either there is a heredity of acquired characteristics, or there is no evolution.” The heredity of acquired traits is indeed most clearly manifested when plants are propagated by cuttings, which Weisman, as a zoologist, did not think about, in some cases during asexual reproduction of animals, sometimes as a result of neoteny during sexual reproduction, even in normal mammals many features are inherited chemical composition mother's body, her immune system. The difference between Timiryazev and Darwin, on the one hand, and creationists and Lamarckists, including "Soviet creative Darwinism", on the other hand, lies in the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, which recognizes the statistical possibility of inheritance of some acquired traits and a new hereditary information, and, although the true Darwinists categorically deny the concept of the struggle for existence between genes in one organism proposed by Weisman, the mechanisms for transmitting hereditary information can also evolve.

Therefore, about the statement of the breeder Vilmorin, with the works of which, like the works of L. Burbank, Russian breeders got acquainted thanks to Timiryazev’s translations, Timiryazev wrote: “they talk about the heredity of acquired properties, but heredity itself - is it not an acquired property?” . In a polemical fervor, Timiryazev even quarreled with the Academy of Sciences, sharply criticizing one of his teachers, academician Famintsyn, for making concessions to anti-Darwinists, who, objecting to the general public reading the writings of anti-Darwinists (including Lamarckists and neo and post-neo - "Darwinists"), believed that that they can still be published in small editions for specialists, since specialists will be able to separate the rational grain of these works from the delusions of anti-Darwinists, and answers to the objections of anti-Darwinists will help to move science forward. K. A. Timiryazev never forgave Dostoevsky, even after his death, for the fact that Sonechka Marmeladova read the works of the Darwinist Lyell, and Raskolnikov justified the murder of the old pawnbroker by the struggle for existence.

Timiryazev called the very term “struggle for existence” an “unfortunate metaphor” and pointed to the presence in nature not only of struggle, but also of mutual assistance, which is especially pronounced in the so-called symbiosis, that is, the cohabitation of organisms. different types- brilliant discoveries in the study of symbiosis were made just by one of his teachers, Academician Famintsyn. That is why the “struggle for existence” between genes according to the concept of August Weismann was especially depressing for Timiryazev, since, as anti-Darwinists rightly pointed out, Weismann’s exposition of Darwinism exposes Darwinists as opponents of the cellular theory and supporters of vitalism and social Darwinism. At the same time, Timiryazev was never a supporter of partisanship and groupism in science, in particular, he respected opponents and noticed their merits, even vitalists and neo-Darwinists, where they did not claim to be their exposition of Darwinism. So, he always emphasized that I.P. Borodin is “a very serious botanist.”

In the process of forming a scientific worldview, Timiryazev assigned biology a central place. Biology, he emphasized, stands at the junction of the inorganic world and the human world, and therefore its development “served for a more complete philosophical unification of the entire vast real content of human knowledge, proving the universality of that scientific method of revealing the truth, which, starting from observation and experience and testing itself observation and experience, turned out to be capable of solving the most complex problems, before which the poetic intuition of the theologian and the most subtle dialectic of the metaphysics helplessly stopped.

Popularization of natural science

Among the educated Russian society, Timiryazev was widely known as a popularizer of natural science. His popular scientific lectures and articles included in the collections "Public lectures and speeches" (M., 1888), "Some main tasks of modern natural science" (M., 1895) "Agriculture and plant physiology" (M., 1893), "Charles Darwin and his teachings" (4th ed., M., 1898), according to the characteristics of ESBE, are "a happy combination of strict scientificity, clarity of presentation, brilliant style". The translation into Russian of Ch. Darwin’s work “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” performed by K. A. Timiryazev is different high quality, precision and impeccable language. Plant Life (9th lifetime edition, 1919; translated into all major European languages) is an example of a publicly available course in plant physiology. In his popular scientific works, Timiryazev is an ardent defender and popularizer of Darwinism and a staunch and consistent supporter of the rationalist (as they used to say, "mechanistic", "Cartesian") view of the nature of physiological phenomena. He contrasted reason with occultism, mysticism, spiritualism, and instinct. Six volumes of Comte always lay on his desktop, he called himself a supporter of positive philosophy - positivism, and he considered both Darwinism and Marx's political economy to be the correction of mistakes and the development of Comte's biology and the political economy of Saint-Simon and Comte, respectively, guided by Newton's motto - "Physics, beware of metaphysics."

Timiryazev-biographer

As a historian of science, Timiryazev published biographies of many prominent scientists. Over the course of more than 50 years, he created a whole gallery of biographies of many fighters for the people's cause - from the biography of the socialist Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1862 to the essay on the "Friend of the People" Marat in 1919, - moreover, he showed that despite impeccable personal honesty and devotion to the people, both the Jacobins and the leaders of the Bolsheviks, unlike many of their opponents, were narrow-minded, bourgeois revolutionaries, and the obstacles they created to the development of democracy and violations of human rights are connected with this. [ ]

Addresses

In St. Petersburg

• May 22, 1843 - 1854 - Galernaya Street, 16;
• 1854 - house of A. F. Juncker -

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Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev (May 22 (June 3), 1843, St. Petersburg - April 28, 1920, Moscow) - Russian naturalist, professor at Moscow University, founder of Russian scientific school plant physiologists, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917; corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences since 1890). Deputy of the Moscow City Council (1920). Honorary doctorates from Cambridge, Universities of Geneva and Glasgow.

Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev was born in St. Petersburg in 1843. He received his primary education at home. In 1861 he entered the St. Petersburg University at the cameral faculty, then switched to the physical and mathematical faculty, the course of which he graduated in 1866 with a candidate's degree and was awarded a gold medal for his essay "On liver mosses" (not published).

In 1860, his first scientific work "A device for studying the decomposition of carbon dioxide" appeared in print, and in the same year Timiryazev was sent abroad to prepare for a professorship. He worked with the Chamberlain, Bunsen, Kirchhoff, Berthelot and listened to lectures by Helmholtz, Bussengo, Claude Bernard and others.

Returning to Russia, Timiryazev defended his master's thesis (" Spectral analysis chlorophyll", 1871) and was appointed professor at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow. Here he lectured in all departments of botany, until he was left behind the state due to the closure of the academy (in 1892).

In 1875, Timiryazev received a doctorate in botany for his essay "On the Assimilation of Light by a Plant." In 1877 he was invited to Moscow University to the Department of Plant Anatomy and Physiology. He also lectured at women's "collective courses" in Moscow. In addition, Timiryazev was chairman of the botanical department of the Society of Natural Science Lovers at Moscow University.

In 1911 he left the university, protesting against the oppression of students. Timiryazev welcomed the October Revolution, and in 1920 sent one of the first copies of his book "Science and Democracy" to V. I. Lenin. In the dedicatory inscription, the scientist noted the happiness "to be his [Lenin's] contemporary and witness to his glorious activity."

Timiryazev's scientific works, distinguished by their unity of plan, strict consistency, precision of methods, and elegance of experimental technique, are devoted to the question of the decomposition of atmospheric carbon dioxide by green plants under the influence of solar energy, and have greatly contributed to the elucidation of this most important and most interesting chapter of plant physiology.

The study of the composition and optical properties of the green pigment of plants (chlorophyll), its genesis, the physical and chemical conditions for the decomposition of carbon dioxide, the determination of the components of the solar ray that take part in this phenomenon, the fate of these rays in the plant, and, finally, the study of the quantitative relationship between the absorbed energy and the work done - these are the tasks outlined in the first works of Timiryazev and largely resolved in his subsequent works.

To this it should be added that Timiryazev was the first to introduce experiments in Russia with plant culture in artificial soils. The first greenhouse for this purpose was arranged by him at the Petrovsky Academy in the early 70s, that is, soon after the appearance of this kind of devices in Germany. Later, the same greenhouse was arranged by Timiryazev at the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod.

Timiryazev's outstanding scientific merits earned him the title of Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Honorary Member of the Kharkov and St. Petersburg Universities, the Free Economic Society, and many other learned societies and institutions.

In the 1930s–1950s T. D. Lysenko reproduced these views of Timiryazev in his speeches. In particular, in the report of June 3, 1943 “K. A. Timiryazev and the tasks of our agrobiology” at the solemn meeting of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of K. A. Timiryazev in the Moscow House of Scientists, Lysenko cited these statements of Timiryazev, calling Mendelian genetics “false science”.

In 1950, in the article “Biology”, the TSB wrote: “Weisman absolutely groundlessly called his direction “neo-Darwinism”, which K. A. Timiryazev resolutely opposed, showing that Weismann’s teaching was completely directed against Darwinism.”

K. A. Timiryazev acted as a supporter of the ideas of J.-B. Lamarck: in particular, he joined the position of the English philosopher and sociologist H. Spencer (1820–1903), who argued: “Either there is a heredity of acquired characteristics, or there is no evolution.” Timiryazev wrote about the statement of the breeder Vilmorin: “They talk about the heredity of acquired properties, but heredity itself - is it not an acquired property?”.

Among the educated Russian society, Timiryazev was widely known as a popularizer of natural science. His popular scientific lectures and articles included in the collections "Public lectures and speeches" (M., 1888), "Some main tasks of modern natural science" (M., 1895) "Agriculture and plant physiology" (M., 1893), "Charles Darwin and His Teaching" (4th ed., Moscow, 1898) is a happy combination of rigorous science, clarity of presentation, and brilliant style.

His Plant Life (5th ed., Moscow, 1898; translated into foreign languages) is an example of a publicly available course in plant physiology. In his popular scientific works, Timiryazev is a staunch and consistent supporter of the mechanical view of the nature of physiological phenomena and an ardent defender and popularizer of Darwinism.

Publications
A list of 27 scientific works by Timiryazev that appeared before 1884 is included in the appendix to his speech "L'etat actuel de nos connaissances sur la fonction chlorophyllienne" ("Bulletin du Congres internation. de Botanique a St.-Peterbourg", 1884). After 1884 appeared:
* "L'effet chimique et l'effet physiologique de la lumiere sur la chlorophylle" ("Comptes Rendus", 1885)
* "Chemische und physiologische Wirkung des Lichtes auf das Chlorophyll" ("Chemisch. Centralblatt", 1885, No. 17)
* "La protophylline dans les plantes etioleees" ("Compt. Rendus", 1889)
* Enregistrement photographique de la fonction chlorophyllienne par la plante vivante (Compt. Rendus, CX, 1890)
* “Photochemical action of the extreme rays of the visible spectrum” (“Proceedings of the Department of Physical Sciences of the Society of Natural Science Lovers”, vol. V, 1893)
* "La protophylline naturelle et la protophylline artificielle" ("Comptes R.", 1895)
* Science and Democracy. Collection of articles 1904-1919. Leningrad: Surf, 1926. 432 p.

and other works. In addition, Timiryazev owns the study of gas exchange in the root nodules of leguminous plants (“Proceedings of St. Petersburg. General Naturalist”, vol. XXIII). Under the editorship of Timiryazev, the Collected Works of Charles Darwin and other books were published in Russian translation.

Memory
In honor of Timiryazev are named:
* lunar crater
* ship "Akademik Timiryazev"
* Moscow Agricultural Academy
* Timiryazev Street in Zaporozhye
* Timiryazev Street in Voronezh.
* Timiryazev Street in Lipetsk.
* Timiryazev Street (since 1999 Yu.Akaeva) in Makhachkala
* Timiryazev Street in Minsk.
* Timiryazevskaya street in Moscow.
* Timiryazev Street in Nizhny Novgorod.
* Timiryazev Street in Perm.
* Timiryazev Street in Bishkek.
* Timiryazev Street in Almaty
* Timiryazev Street in Chelyabinsk
* Timiryazev Street in Magnitogorsk
* In 1991, the Timiryazevskaya metro station was opened on the Serpukhovskaya line of the Moscow Metro.
* Agricultural College of the village of Oktyabrsky Gorodok
* Timiryazev Street in Shymkent
* Timiryazev Street in Yalta
* Timiryazev Street in Krasnoyarsk
* Timiryazev Street in Bendery (PMR)
* Timiryazev Street in Izhevsk
* Timiryazev Street in Odessa.

He was born in St. Petersburg in the family of customs official Arkady Semenovich Timiryazev, who came from an ancient noble family. Arkady Semenovich was a man of republican views, for which he caused the personal dislike of Tsar Nicholas I as "unreliable." In his youth, the father of the future scientist spoke enthusiastically about the Great French Revolution and, being a member of the military campaign of 1813-1814, dreamed of getting to Paris, which was dear to him. However, having reached Montmartre (a suburb of Paris), Arkady Semenovich received the strictest order to return home. Even there, the "freethinker" and the hater of the autocracy were closely monitored by the tsar's servants. Later, when the latter was already serving as the director of customs, they tried to fabricate various charges against him through intrigues, only the impeccable honesty of Arkady Semenovich prevented the implementation of insidious plans. In the end, they got rid of him by abolishing the position, sending him to a very small pension. And then the question arose of the maintenance of his huge family. Arkady Semenovich from his first marriage already had a daughter, Maria, and two sons - Alexander and Ivan, and there were also four sons from his second marriage: Nikolai, Dmitry, Vasily and the youngest - Clement.
At that time, Clement was only 15 years old, and he, like his brothers, had to start working early to help his family. His first profession was as a referent and newspaper translator. Two years later, he and his brother Vasily entered St. Petersburg University at the cameral faculty, and then, having oriented themselves, Clement chose the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, and Vasily - the Faculty of Law. In 1861, Kliment Timiryazev enthusiastically plunged into public life, participating in the student movement. He was expelled from the university for refusing to accept new disciplinary rules - the "matricules" of Minister Putyatin. What the young man thought then is best expressed by the words he published in 1905 in the article “On the Threshold of a Renewed University”:
“In our time, we loved the university, as now, perhaps, they don’t love it, and not without reason. For me personally, science was everything. This feeling was not mixed with any considerations about a career, not because I was in special favorable circumstances - no, I earned my livelihood myself, but just thoughts about a career, about the future, there was no place in my head: it was too full of the present. But then a storm came up in the form of not a good memory, Minister Putyatin with his notorious matriculations. It was necessary either to submit to the new, police system, or to give up the university, to give up, perhaps forever, from science - and thousands of us did not hesitate in our choice. The point was, of course, not in some matricules, but in the conviction that we, in our modest share, are doing a common thing, rebuffing the first breath of reaction, in the conviction that it is shameful to surrender to this reaction. Two years later, Timiryazev was restored at the university, but already as a volunteer.
Immediately after graduating from the university in 1866, K.A. Timiryazev is sent to work at the Simbirsk experimental field, where, under the guidance of D.I. Mendeleev puts experiments with fertilizers, and on other agricultural issues. Here he established the beneficial effect of superphosphate on grain yields even in dry summer conditions and for the first time showed the importance of deep plowing to combat drought. Later, throughout his life, he was actively involved in many important issues agriculture: plant nutrition, fertilizer application, drought control, selection, seed production, etc. Some of these works were reflected in his book Agriculture and Plant Physiology (1906). Chief in scientific work Kliment Arkadyevich was the study of photosynthesis in plants. He enriched this section of plant physiology with classical studies unsurpassed in depth and originality. Works on photosynthesis by K.A. Timiryazev began to print in 1867. The most important of them are collected in his book "The Sun, Life and Chlorophyll" (1923). He often and with great success gave public lectures on various issues of natural science and agronomy. The cycle of these lectures made up his famous book The Life of the Plant (1878).
As biologist K.A. Timiryazev developed Darwinism, struggled with Darwin's idealistic mistakes, defended his teaching from the attacks of reactionaries and obscurantists. He first read On the Origin of Species less than two years after its publication, as a first-year student. Four years later, on the pages of Otechestvennye Zapiski, he places his first articles about him, which the next year were included in the book, which later became known as Charles Darwin and His Teachings. In 1877, visiting Darwin at his Down estate, Timiryazev presented him with his work on him. A year before his death, the great Russian scientist completes the characterization of his teachings with the articles “Ch. Darwin and K. Marx” and “The Historical Method in Biology”. In the latter, Timiryazev narrates that Darwin's main merit lies in the fact that he, having managed to combine "biology with history" and explain "the harmony of the organic world as a result of the elimination of all inharmonious natural selection”, answered the question “how the evolutionary process is carried out”.
The history of science Kliment Arkadyevich considered it necessary to study in close connection with practice, with production, in which he saw the most important source of the development of science. "The demands of life have always been the first stimuli that prompted the search for knowledge, and in turn, the degree of their satisfaction served as the most accessible, the most obvious sign of his success." Timiryazev noted, in defiance of the idealistic perversions of the Machists, that the main driving forces of science, which originated from the desire of people for knowledge, action and aesthetic pleasure, initially served as a means to achieve practical goals and only later, due to exercise, turned into an independent need, an attraction of a higher order. He saw the sources of the origin of science not in the ideological impulses of the individual, as in the Machist Petzold, but in his material needs, production activity. "Almost every science owes its origin to some art, just as every art in turn follows from some human need." Timiryazev never tires of repeating that scientists who really moved science forward never ignored centuries of experience. ordinary people, workers. As an example of such a close unity of science and practice, Timiryazev cites the activities of Darwin: “... Darwin's teaching is indebted to the facts acquired by practical figures in the field of horticulture and animal husbandry; everyone knows that one of the main merits of this scientist lies precisely in the fact that he used this huge stock of factual knowledge to build his theory, that he owes the most basic idea of ​​his teaching to practitioners.

Timiryazev associated the rapid development of Russian science in the middle of the 19th century both with the successes of natural science abroad and with the general upsurge of the revolutionary democratic movement in Russia: a century as teachers in Simferopol and Yaroslavl, the lawyer Kovalevsky would be a prosecutor, the cadet Beketov would be a squadron commander, and the sapper Sechenov would dig trenches according to all the rules of his art. Speaking of the awakening of natural science, we must, of course, have in mind here not only its development in a close circle of specialists who studied and promoted science, but also the general movement that swept wide circles of society, left its stamp on the school (higher and secondary) , on literature, influenced more or less deeply on the general mindset.
One of the conditions conducive to the development of natural science in Russia, according to Kliment Arkadievich, was the fact that " natural Sciences, as the most remote from politics, were also considered the most harmless ... only by this relative tolerance for natural science ... we can probably explain the fact that this desire for the study of natural science, clearly expressed in the second five years of the fifties, was caused by whole galaxy talented people, initial development which should be attributed to the end of the forties and the first half of the fifties.
For 22 years (1870-1892) K.A. Timiryazev was a professor at the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy. In it, he built the first growing house in Russia for experiments with plants. At the All-Russian Exhibition in 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod
de he achieved the construction of an even better vegetative house, in which he personally demonstrated the nutrition of plants.
Back in 1867, on his way from Simbirsk, he stopped by the newly opened Petrovka to see Professor of Chemistry P.A. Ilyenkov, where he finds him in the library at his desk; in front of him lay a thick fresh German volume of K. Marx's Capital. Immediately, Pavel Antonovich shared his expressive lecture about what he had read. The professor of chemistry was already familiar with the activities of Marx, because. during the time of the first commune in 1848 he was in Paris: he was one of the first distributors of Marx's ideas in Russia. As another professor of Petrovka suggested, Fortunatov, Ilyenkov was the one who took the initiative to attract Timiryazev to the new university. A. Fortunatov, who knew perfectly well the scientific and social views of Kliment Arkadievich, who sat next to him shoulder to shoulder for more than five years, noted that Timiryazev, while maintaining the dignity of a scientist, more than once shuddered colleagues, members of the council of the Petrovsky Academy, with his "seditious spirit." The young teacher of botany was already then closely associated with the advanced part of the freedom-loving professors. During his work in Petrovka, Timiryazev repeatedly defended revolutionary-minded students from the repressions of the academic authorities, and in the early 90s. XIX century receives the first reprimand in a "strange form" for defending students who participated in a demonstration on the occasion of Chernyshevsky's death.

Professors of the Imperial Moscow University who resigned in protest against the resignation of the rector and vice-rectors of the university. Sitting: V.P. Serbian, K.A. Timiryazev, N.A. Umov, P.A. Minakov, A.A. Manuilov, M.A. Menzbir, V.A. Focht, V.D. Shervinsky, V.K. Tserasky, Prince. E.N. Trubetskoy. Standing: I.P. Aleksinsky, V.K. Roth, N.D. Zelinsky, P.N. Lebedev, A.A. Eichenwald, G.F. Shershenevich, V.M. Khvostov, A.S. Alekseev, F.A. Rein, D.M. Petrushevsky, B.K. Mlodzievsky, V.I. Vernadsky, S.A. Chaplygin, N.V. Davydov. 1911. Photo by A. staker

Timiryazev's "seditiousness" haunted the conservative-minded part of the nobility and professors: literary critic Strakhov and academician Famintsyn scribbled numerous libels against the leader of the Petrovskaya opposition, Timiryazev. Black Hundreds publicist Prince V.P. Meshchersky in his newspaper Grazhdanin attacks K.A. Timiryazev for "casting God out of nature". Professor Tikhomirov, having spoken out against the Darwinists with a lecture "Two liars - Darwin and Tolstoy", received a promotion in rank - he became a trustee of the Moscow educational district. The outstanding ones, V.O. Kovalevsky and I.I. Mechnikov, are forced to leave to work abroad.
As Timiryazev later noted: “The present century, like its predecessor, is leaning towards sunset with undoubted signs of a general reaction. The reaction in the field of science is only one of its particular manifestations. Just as any reaction does not come forward with an open visor, but loves to hide under a mask that does not rightfully belong to it, so the modern campaign against science, proclaiming its imaginary bankruptcy, likes to call itself the "revival of idealism."
K.A. Timiryazev does not confine himself to pointing out the connection between reaction in science and general political reaction, he shows the social roots of this reaction and its social carriers - the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, which in the new conditions is in solidarity with the nobility and is based on clericalism and idealistic philosophy. “The decaying bourgeoisie,” writes Timiryazev, “is getting closer and closer to obsolete metaphysics, does not disdain to enter into an alliance with both mysticism and the militant church ...” In contrast to the prediction of the obscurantist Bergson that “the past will gnaw the future and therefore grow fat”, Timiryazev writes that "science, reality, history teach the opposite: the gaps of the present, dispelling the darkness of the past, prepare a brighter future."
He, along with other "unreliable" professors and students, was dismissed from the academy by the Minister of Education Ostrovsky in connection with its closure for the speeches of revolutionary-minded students, whom the great scientist always supported. In 1892, the academy was disbanded and turned into the Moscow Agricultural Institute.
From 1877 to 1911 K.A. Timiryazev was a professor at Moscow University, where he continued to defend everything progressive in science and public life. However, after his dismissal from Petrovka, he was haunted even at the university: unequipped, cramped and stuffy rooms that did not satisfy not only pedagogical, but even hygienic requirements were provided for work. After a cerebral hemorrhage in 1909, Timiryazev was left paralyzed in his left arm and leg. Although the seriously ill scientist had no other sources of income, in 1911 he left the university together with 124 teachers, protesting against the oppression of students and the reactionary policy of the Minister of Education Kasso.
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Timiryazev, the great physiologist I.P. Pavlov described his colleague as follows: “Kliment Arkadyevich himself, like the plants he loved dearly, strove for light all his life, storing in himself the treasures of the mind and higher truth, and he himself was a source of light for many generations who strove for light and knowledge and sought warmth. and truth in the harsh conditions of life.
Kliment Arkadyevich from the very beginning condemned the war unleashed by the imperialists in 1914, and a year later accepted Gorky's invitation to head the department of science in the anti-war journal Letopis. In many ways, it was thanks to Timiryazev that his fellow physiologists, Nobel laureates Ilya Mechnikov, Ivan Pavlov, and many cultural figures, socialists of various parties and trends, were attracted to work in the journal for direct or indirect participation. In the same period, V.I. Lenin began to strive to be published in this journal and even dreamed of uniting with Kliment Arkadyevich against the August bloc of 1912, which was then part of the organizing committee of the Chronicle.

Bold for their time public speaking K.A. Timiryazev stigmatized arbitrariness and oppression in the countryside and came to the correct conclusion that getting two ears of corn where one had previously grown was a political issue. This issue was resolved by the Great October Socialist Revolution, which, thanks to the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, carried out collectivization - the revolutionary restructuring of small peasant farming into a large, mechanized and socialist one.
In 1917, Timiryazev supported Lenin's famous April Theses. Despite the fact that the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party since September of that revolutionary year nominated K.A. Timiryazev to the post of Minister of Education of the Homogeneous Socialist Government, after the victory of the Great October Revolution, the great scientist from the very beginning supported the policy of the Bolshevik Party and took an active part in building a new life; he was elected a member of the Moscow Soviet and a full member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.
In the matter of educating young people, Timiryazev attached great importance to familiarizing them with the life and work of the great luminaries of science, with their courageous struggle for the implementation of their brilliant ideas. He spoke with particular love of those of them who managed to combine their activities with the struggle for the liberation of their people. For more than half a century, Kliment Arkadyevich created a whole gallery of biographies of fighters for the people's cause - from the biography of the socialist Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1862 to an essay on the Friend of the People Marat in 1919. At the same time, Timiryazev was able to notice the weaknesses of this or that scientist. He also rebelled against the immoderate praise and indiscriminate condemnation of historical figures, demanding an objective approach to their assessment: "Our duty in relation to the dead is the same as in relation to the living - the truth."
The most important articles on socio-political issues published by him in different years are collected in his book Science and Democracy (1920). The first copy of this work, published a month before his death, was sent by the author to his friend V.I. Lenin, signing: "To the deeply respected Vladimir Ilyich Lenin from K. Timiryazev, who considers it a pleasure to be his contemporary and witness to his glorious activity."
April 21 Timiryazev falls ill with pneumonia. On April 27, he receives from V.I. Lenin's letter, in which Ilyich admires Kliment Arkadyevich's book "Science and Democracy", reading Timiryazev's remarks "against the bourgeoisie and for Soviet power”, and wishes the author “with all my heart ... health, health and health!”, passing through the new attending physician B.S. Weisbrod invitation to the evening dedicated to his 50th anniversary. On the same day, Timiryazev wrote his last letter, handed over with this communist doctor:
“I have always tried to serve humanity and I am glad that in these serious moments for me I see you, the representative of the party that really serves humanity. The Bolsheviks who promote Leninism - I believe and am convinced - are working for the happiness of the people and will lead them to happiness. I have always been yours and with you. Convey to Vladimir Ilyich my admiration for his brilliant solution of world problems in theory and in practice. I consider it a pleasure to be his contemporary and witness to his glorious activity. I bow to him and I want everyone to know about it. Convey to all comrades my sincere greetings and best wishes for the future successful work for the happiness of mankind."

On the night of April 28, 1920, Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev died. In Moscow, K.A. Two monuments were erected to Timiryazev, his name was given to the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences, the Biological Museum and Petrovka, which became the Moscow Agricultural Academy, which is now called the Russian State Agrarian University.

V.A. RODIONOV

PhD in Agricultural Sciences

Timiryazev, Kliment Arkadievich(1843-1920) - an outstanding Russian botanist and physiologist, researcher of the process of photosynthesis, supporter and popularizer of Darwinism.

Born May 22 (June 3), 1843 in St. Petersburg, in a noble family. His parents, themselves adherents of Republican views, passed on to their children love of freedom and democratic ideals. K.A. Timiryazev received an excellent home education, which allowed him in 1860 to enter the law faculty of the university, from which he soon transferred to the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University.

His early years were covered with the revolutionary ideas of the 60s, which were expressed by Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, which explains the unconditional acceptance of the October Revolution by scientists.
Among his teachers at the university were the systematic botanist A.N. Beketov and the chemist D.I. Mendeleev. K.A. Timiryazev made a report on his first experiments on air nutrition of plants in 1868 at the 1st Congress of Naturalists in St. Petersburg. In this report, he already then gave a broad plan for the study of photosynthesis.

After graduating from the university, Timiryazev worked in the laboratories of France with the chemist P.E. Berthelot and the plant physiologist J.B. Boussengaud, and in Germany with the physicists G.R. Kirchhoff and Bunsen and with one of the creators of spectral analysis, the physiologist and physicist G. L. Helmholtz. Later, he had a meeting with Ch. Darwin, whose ardent supporter Timiryazev was all his life.

Upon his return from abroad, Timiryazev defended his dissertation at St. Petersburg University Spectral analysis of chlorophyll and began teaching in Moscow at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy, now bearing his name. Later he became a professor at the Moscow state university, from which he retired already in his declining years, in 1911.

The scientist welcomed the October Revolution. Despite his age and serious illness, he became a deputy of the Moscow Soviet.

Timiryazev worked all his life to solve the problem of air nutrition of plants, or photosynthesis.

This problem goes far beyond the limits of plant physiology, since the existence of not only plants, but also the entire animal world is connected with photosynthesis. Moreover, in photosynthesis, the plant takes and assimilates not only carbon dioxide from the air, but also the energy of sunlight. This gave Timiryazev the right to talk about the cosmic role of the plant as a transmitter of solar energy to our planet.

As a result of a long study of the absorption spectrum of the green pigment of chlorophyll, the scientist found that red rays are absorbed most intensively and blue-violet rays are somewhat weaker. In addition, he found out that chlorophyll not only absorbs light, but also chemically participates in the process of photosynthesis itself and the law of conservation of energy applies to the process of photosynthesis, and therefore to the entire wildlife. Most of the researchers of those years, especially the German botanists J. Sachs and W. Pfefer, denied this connection. Timiryazev showed that they made a number of experimental errors. Having developed a method of very accurate research, K.A. Timiryazev established that only the rays absorbed by the plant produce work, i.e. carry out photosynthesis. Green rays, for example, are not absorbed by chlorophyll, and photosynthesis does not occur in this part of the spectrum. In addition, he noted that there is a direct proportional relationship between the number of rays absorbed and the work done. In other words, the more light energy absorbed by chlorophyll, the more intense photosynthesis takes place. Chlorophyll absorbs red rays most of all, so photosynthesis in red rays is more intense than in blue or violet, which are less absorbed. Finally, Timiryazev proved that not all of the absorbed energy is spent on photosynthesis, but only 1–3 percent of it.
The main works of K.A. Timiryazev: Charles Darwin and his teachings; plant life; Historical method in biology; Agriculture and plant physiology.