Well-known mineralogist, professor of mineralogy Imp. Moscow University, the son of the economist IV Vernadsky (see). Genus. in 1863. In 1885 he graduated from St. Petersburg. university; in 1890 he acted as a privat docent at Moscow. university; since 1891 he has been in charge there ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia

Vernadsky, Vladimir I.- Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. VERNADSKY Vladimir Ivanovich (1863-1945), Russian naturalist, thinker and public figure. The founder of the complex of modern Earth sciences of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiochemistry, etc. The organizer of many ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (1863 1945) naturalist and thinker, one of the founders of geochemistry, radiogeology, genetic mineralogy, creator of biogeochemistry, the doctrine of the biosphere and its transition to the noosphere. He graduated from the natural department of St. Petersburg University. ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

Soviet naturalist, outstanding thinker, mineralogist and crystallographer, founder of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiogeology and the theory of the biosphere, organizer of many scientific institutions. ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (1863 1945) Russian naturalist, thinker and public figure. Founder of the complex of modern Earth sciences of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiogeology, hydrogeology, etc. Creator of many scientific schools. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1925; ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Well-known mineralogist and public figure. Born in 1863. Completed a course at St. Petersburg University; headed the mineralogical institute of the same university; after defense in St. Petersburg. doctoral dissertation On the phenomena of slip in the mineral ... ... Biographical Dictionary

- (1863 1945), chemist, mineralogist and crystallographer, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1912), academician (1919) and first president (1919 21) of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Born in St. Petersburg. He graduated from St. Petersburg University (1885), in 1886 88 the curator of his Mineralogical Museum. ... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

- (1863 1945), naturalist, thinker and public figure. Son of I. V. and M. N. Vernadsky. Founder of the complex of modern Earth sciences of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiology, hydrogeology, etc. Creator of many scientific schools. Academician ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky Date of birth: February 28 (March 12), 1863 Place of birth: St. Petersburg, Russian Empire Date of death: January 6, 1945 Place of death ... Wikipedia

VERNADSKY Vladimir Ivanovich- (28.02 (12.03). 1863, St. Petersburg 6.01.1945, Moscow) naturalist and thinker, founder of the doctrine of the biosphere and noosphere, genetic mineralogy, radiology, biogeochemistry and other scientific areas. In 1885 he graduated from the natural department. physical ... ... Russian Philosophy. Encyclopedia

Books

• Philosophical thoughts of a naturalist, Vernadsky Vladimir Ivanovich. The book on the manuscripts of V. I. Vernadsky preserved in the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences publishes his latest works “Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon” and a series of essays, united under the title ...
• History of the minerals of the earth's crust. Volume 2. History of natural waters. Part one. Issue 2, Vernadsky Vladimir Ivanovich. Vernadsky Vladimir Ivanovich - Soviet naturalist, outstanding thinker, mineralogist and crystallographer, founder of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiogeology and the doctrine of the biosphere, ...

Ukrainian Volodymyr Ivanovich Vernadsky; Russian doref. Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky

Ukrainian and Soviet natural scientist, thinker and public figure, one of the representatives of Russian cosmism, creator of the science of biogeochemistry

Vladimir Vernadsky

short biography

Thinker, natural scientist, public figure, founder of a number of scientific schools, founder of the doctrine of the biosphere, a complex of modern scientific knowledge about the Earth (biogeochemistry, radiogeology, hydrogeology, etc.). Born in St. Petersburg, in 1863, on March 12 (February 28, O.S.), in a noble family. His parents were of Ukrainian origin, therefore, both Russians and residents of Ukraine consider Vernadsky's compatriot.

The unfavorable climate forced the Vernadsky family in 1868 to change their place of residence to Kharkov, which at that time was known as one of the main scientific centers. In 1873, Vladimir entered the Kharkov classical gymnasium. From the third grade, the boy studied at the First St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium, because. in 1876 the Vernadskys returned home. This educational institution was considered one of the best in the country and laid an excellent foundation for the intellectual baggage of the future famous scientist. In particular, the gymnasium was known for its high level of teaching philosophy, history, and foreign languages.

The decoration of Vernadsky's biography was the fact that he read scientific works in 15 languages, he himself sometimes wrote in English, German and French. Young Vernadsky continued his education at St. Petersburg University, at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, from which he graduated in 1885. In the same year he was appointed to the post of curator of the mineralogical cabinet of Moscow University. In 1890 V.I. Vernadsky is already assistant professor of mineralogy. Having defended his doctoral dissertation in 1897, from 1898 to 1911 he was a professor at Moscow University.

At the beginning of the XX century. IN AND. Vernadsky is a prominent figure not only in the world of science, but also in the field of social and political activity. In 1906, from Moscow University, he became a member of the State Council. In the same year, he was elected to the post of head of the mineralogical department of the Geological Museum named after Peter the Great; he also became an adjunct of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Two years later, in 1908, Vernadsky was elected an extraordinary academician, in 1912 the scientist became an ordinary academician, an academician of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1914 Vernadsky became director of the Mineralogical and Geological Museum of the Academy of Sciences. In 1915, he took the initiative to create a commission at the Academy of Sciences that would study the natural productive forces of Russia; from the year of foundation until 1930 he was its chairman.

After the events of October 1917, Vernadsky, in order to avoid arrest (he was a member of the Small Council of Ministers, which declared the illegitimacy of the Bolshevik Government), had to leave for the south of the country. Together with N.P. Vasilenko in 1918, he created the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, was its first president, was a professor at the Simferopol Taurida University, and in 1920-1921. - the rector of this educational institution. In 1921, he returned to Petrograd, where he set about organizing the Radium Institute. The period from 1922 to 1926 is marked in his biography by his stay abroad, in Paris and Prague. It was in France that his fundamental research "Geochemistry" was first published.

In the USSR, Academician V.I. Vernadsky returned in 1926, and in the same year one of his most famous works, the book Biosphere, was published. It is the theme of the biosphere, its evolution into the noosphere, the sphere of the mind, that remains the main one for him, although many diversified studies continued to come out from the pen of Vladimir Ivanovich. In 1928, he created the Biogeochemical Laboratory, which he directed until the end of his life. It was biogeochemistry that was one of the two main directions of his activity as a researcher, along with the history of sciences.

In 1940, the scientist initiated the development of uranium research in order to obtain nuclear energy. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where Vernadsky continued his intensive scientific work until 1943, the year of his return home, where he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree for outstanding services in honor of his 80th anniversary. Died V.I. Vernadsky on January 6, 1945 in Moscow. His largely innovative legacy includes more than 700 published works, which had a noticeable impact on the creation of a scientific picture of the universe, in which man, his mind, is given the central role not as a contemplator of nature, the environment, but as its creator.

Biography from Wikipedia

Vladimir Vernadsky, high school student
First Petersburg Gymnasium, 1878

His father, Ivan Vasilyevich, according to family legend, was a descendant of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks; at the time of the birth of his son, he served as an official for special assignments under the Minister of the Interior, taught economics and had the rank of real state councilor. Mother, Anna Petrovna, came from a Russian noble family. The godfather of the future scientist was Pyotr Vasilyevich Goslavsky - the father of the writer and playwright Evgeny Goslavsky, the artist Pyotr Goslavsky.

Vladimir Vernadsky was a second cousin of the famous Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko.

In 1868, due to the unfavorable climate of St. Petersburg, the Vernadsky family moved to Kharkov, one of the leading scientific and cultural centers of the Russian Empire. In 1873, Vladimir entered the first class of the Kharkov classical gymnasium. Under the influence of his father, he acquired sympathy for the Ukrainian movement. I specially learned Polish to read books about Ukraine.

Education

V. I. Vernadsky during an internship in Paris, 1889

In 1876, after the family returned to St. Petersburg, V. I. Vernadsky entered the First St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium. In 1881, he graduated from the gymnasium eighth in graduation, which was not at all so bad, given the very strong team.

In 1881-1885 he studied at the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated. He was a member of the expeditions (1882, 1884) and a student of V. V. Dokuchaev, who gave him the topic of his Ph.D. work “On the physical properties of isomorphic mixtures”. Among his teachers were the chemist D. I. Mendeleev and the botanist A. N. Beketov. He participated in a student meeting on November 10, 1882, for which he was detained by the police. Was familiar with Alexander Ulyanov. Member of the populist circle of D.I. Shakhovsky (“Priyutinsky Brotherhood”), where he met his future wife Natalia Egorovna Staritskaya. He was elected chairman of the Central Council of United Communities.

In 1885-1890 he became the curator of the Mineralogical Cabinet of St. Petersburg University.

After the failure of the "Plot of the First March", in 1888-1890, V. I. Vernadsky was sent by the University to Italy, France and Germany to continue his studies and prepare for a professorship. In 1889, he helped Dokuchaev in preparing and showing a soil exposition at the World Exhibition in Paris, for which the Russian Soil Department of the exhibition was awarded a gold medal.

In 1897, V. I. Vernadsky defended his doctoral dissertation at St. Petersburg University on the topic "Phenomena of sliding of a crystalline substance."

Teaching activity

In 1890, V. I. Vernadsky, at the invitation of Professor A. P. Pavlov, became assistant professor of crystallography and mineralogy at the Imperial Moscow University.

From 1898 he worked as a professor of mineralogy at Moscow University. He was the author of lecture courses and textbooks on mineralogy and crystallography.

In 1911, V. I. Vernadsky, in solidarity with the professors dismissed for political reasons, resigned.

Scientific activity

The scientific work of V. I. Vernadsky had a significant impact on the development of the Earth sciences, the academies of sciences of Russia, Ukraine, as well as on the worldview of people in general.

In 1906, V. I. Vernadsky was elected a full adjunct member of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the same year, he was elected a member of the State Council from the Academy of Sciences and Universities, but he left it due to the dissolution of the State Duma of the 1st convocation.

In 1908 he was elected as an extraordinary academician to the Academy of Sciences and for the second time - to the State Council. Was sent to France and Great Britain.

V. I. Vernadsky did a lot of work on organizing expeditions and creating a laboratory base for the search and study of radioactive minerals. V. I. Vernadsky was one of the first who realized the great importance of the study of radioactive processes for all aspects of society. The course of research on radioactive deposits was reflected in the Proceedings of the Radium Expedition of the Academy of Sciences, mainly these were expeditions to the Urals, the Urals, Baikal, Transbaikalia, the Tuya-Muyunskoye deposit in the Fergana region (1915-1916) and the Caucasus, but in I. Vernadsky pointed out the need for such studies in the southern regions, especially on the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas. He believed that permanent research stations should be organized for successful work.

In the summer of 1917, V. I. Vernadsky arrived at his estate Shishaki in the Poltava province, where he was caught by the October Revolution. According to other sources, he worked in the Ministry of Education in Petrograd and, after the October Revolution, handed over the affairs to the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky. On November 22, by decision of the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Academy of Sciences, he was sent to the south for health reasons and to continue work.

Having recognized the independence of Ukraine as a "fait accompli", V. I. Vernadsky left the Cadet Party in May 1918.

On October 27, 1918, Vernadsky became one of the founders and the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, established by the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. At the same time, by prior agreement with the Minister of Education N.P. Vasilenko, he did not accept the citizenship of Ukraine. He taught a course in geochemistry at Kiev University. Interested in biogeochemistry.

In the spring of 1919, after the establishment of Soviet power, a representative of the Russian Academy of Sciences, his student A.E. Fersman, arrived in Kyiv to communicate with Vernadsky. During a trip for negotiations to Rostov-on-Don through Novorossiysk, he fell ill with typhus and remained in the Crimea, was transported by relatives to Simferopol. After his recovery in February 1920 and until 1921 he worked as a professor, from September 1920 - rector of the Taurida University in Simferopol.

In mid-March 1921, the Vernadsky family returned to their homeland in Petrograd. VI Vernadsky headed the Meteoritic Department of the Mineralogical Museum in Petrograd (1921-1939), the Radiochemical Laboratory and KEPS. He managed to organize the expedition of L. A. Kulik to Siberia, to the place of the Tunguska meteorite that fell in 1908.

On July 14, 1921, Vernadsky was arrested and brought to the prison on Shpalernaya. The next day, during interrogation, he realized that they were trying to accuse him of espionage. To the surprise of the guards, Vernadsky was released. A little later it turned out that Karpinsky and Oldenburg sent telegrams to Lenin and Lunacharsky, after which Semashko and Lenin's assistant Kuzmin ordered Vernadsky to be released.

Vernadsky participated in the creation in January 1922 of the Radium Institute, which he headed until 1939. The Institute was formed by combining all the radiological institutions that existed in Petrograd by that time:

• Radium Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences
• Radium Department of the State X-ray and Radiological Institute
• radiochemical laboratory
• Collegium for the organization of a radium plant.

In terms of scientific management, the radium mine and the recently established plant in Bondyug (Tatarstan) were subordinated to the new institute. In December 1921, V. G. Khlopin and M. A. Pasvik obtained the first highly enriched radium preparations in Russia at this plant. An integrated approach to the problem of radioactivity, characteristic of the founders of the Institute - Academicians Vernadsky and Khlopin, predetermined the complex structure of the Institute, based on a combination of physical, chemical and radiogeochemical studies.

In the period from 1922 to 1926, Vernadsky was sent to France to teach a course in geochemistry at the Sorbonne. He worked at the Museum of Natural History and the Curie Institute, where he researched parisium, a substance mistaken for a new radioactive element. In Paris, his fundamental work "Geochemistry" was published in French.

In 1915-1930, the chairman of the Commission for the Study of the Natural Production Forces of Russia, he was one of the creators of the GOELRO plan. The commission made an enormous contribution to the geological study of the Soviet Union and the creation of its independent mineral resource base.

Upon his return in 1926, he continued his creative independent work. He formulated the concept of the biological structure of the ocean. According to this concept, life in the ocean is concentrated in "films" - geographical boundary layers of various scales.

In 1927, he organized the Department of Living Matter at the USSR Academy of Sciences. However, he used the term "living matter" in a sense different from the later works of O. B. Lepeshinskaya - as a set of living organisms of the biosphere.

From left to right: sitting N. D. Zelinsky, I. A. Kablukov, N. M. Kizhner, A. N. Severtsov; stand N. N. Luzin, M. N. Rozanov and V. I. Vernadsky. 1934

After the transfer of academic scientific institutions to Moscow in 1934, the Vernadskys settled in a small two-story mansion on the Arbat, occupying the second floor.

In the summer of 1935, Vladimir Ivanovich's health deteriorated, and on the recommendations of a cardiologist, he leaves for treatment abroad, in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad). After a course of treatment, he worked in Paris, London, Germany. This was his last foreign trip, in Europe the breath of a future war was felt. Vernadsky meets for the last time with his daughter Nina (1898-1967; married Toll), who soon left Czechoslovakia for the United States and settled near her brother George (1887-1973), in New Haven. Back in 1927, Georgy received an invitation to the Department of Russian History at Yale University.

Abroad, Vernadsky is working on the book Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon, which was published only in 1977.

With A. E. Fersman, 1940

In 1936, on the occasion of Vernadsky's 75th birthday, a collection (in 2 volumes) edited by Fersman "To Academician V.I. Vernadsky in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of scientific and pedagogical activity" was published.

During the years of political repression, V. I. Vernadsky resigned from all administrative posts, remaining only a scientific consultant (so as not to participate in the “purges”). At the same time, he was elected a member of the geological and geographical, chemical, physical and mathematical departments of the Academy of Sciences. Vernadsky (as well as Fersman, Karpinsky) had colossal practical and theoretical experience in geology, and subsoil is the currency the state needs. In addition, even in those tragic times, Vernadsky had intercessors. Yes, and he himself, when geochemist A.M. Simorin, his student, was arrested, repeatedly wrote to the authorities and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, demanding the release of "a talented scientist, an excellent scientific worker." Until the end of his life, Vernadsky continued to consider Simorin his employee, corresponded with him and refused to sign the order for his dismissal.

VI Vernadsky during his lifetime published 473 scientific papers. He founded a new science - biogeochemistry and made a huge contribution to geochemistry. From 1927 until his death, he served as director of the Biogeochemical Laboratory at the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was a teacher of a whole galaxy of Soviet geochemists.

Of the philosophical heritage of Vernadsky, the most famous was the doctrine of the noosphere; he is considered one of the main thinkers of the direction known as Russian cosmism.

In the summer of 1940, on the initiative of Vernadsky, research began on uranium for the production of nuclear energy. With the beginning of the war, he was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where he created his books “On the States of Space in the Geological Phenomena of the Earth. Against the backdrop of the growth of science in the 20th century” and “The chemical structure of the Earth's biosphere and its environment”.

last years of life

V. I. Vernadsky at work

During the war, V. I. Vernadsky was evacuated to the village of Borovoye in Kazakhstan. On February 3, 1943, his wife Natalya Yegorovna died there. He was deeply saddened by her loss.

In 1943, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, "for many years of outstanding work in the field of science and technology," V. I. Vernadsky was awarded the Stalin Prize, 1st degree. At the end of August 1943, V. I. Vernadsky returned from Kazakhstan to Moscow.

On December 25, 1944, he suffered a stroke. Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky died on January 6, 1945 in Moscow. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Monument to V. I. Vernadsky, Novodevichy Cemetery

The doctrine of the biosphere and noosphere

In the structure of the biosphere, Vernadsky singled out seven types of matter:

• Live;
• Biogenic (arising from living or undergoing processing);
• Inert (abiotic, formed outside of life);
• Bio-inert (arising at the junction of living and non-living; bio-inert, according to Vernadsky, includes soil);
• Substance in the stage of radioactive decay;
• scattered atoms;
• A substance of cosmic origin.

V. I. Vernadsky considered various hypotheses of panspermia in a historical context, he came to the conclusion only about the eternity of life during geological time. Vernadsky extended the methods and approaches of crystallography to the substance of living organisms. Living matter develops in real space, which has a certain structure, symmetry and dissymmetry. The structure of matter corresponds to a certain space, and their diversity indicates the diversity of spaces. Thus, living and inert cannot have a common origin, they come from different spaces, eternally located side by side in the Cosmos. For some time, Vernadsky associated the features of the space of living matter with its alleged non-Euclidean character, but for unclear reasons he abandoned this interpretation and began to explain the space of living matter as a unity of space-time.

Vernadsky considered an important stage in the irreversible evolution of the biosphere to be its transition to the stage of the noosphere.

The main prerequisites for the emergence of the noosphere:

• Settlement of Homo sapiens over the entire surface of the planet and its victory in competition with other biological species;
• Development of planetary communication systems, creation of a single information system for mankind;
• The discovery of such new sources of energy as atomic energy, after which human activity becomes an important geological force;
• The victory of democracies and access to government of the broad masses;
• Increasing involvement of people in science, which also makes humanity a geological force.

Vernadsky's work was characterized by historical optimism: in the irreversible development of scientific knowledge, he saw the only proof of the existence of progress.

Social activity

Vernadsky took part in the founding congress of the Liberation Union in 1903. In 1904, he was a delegate to the Zemsky Congress, which demanded the introduction of a constitution, civil liberties, and elections to the State Duma. In 1905, he participated in the creation of the Constitutional Democratic (Cadet) Party and was a member of its Central Committee until 1918, was a member of the party in the State Council of the Russian Empire (1906, 1907-1911, 1915-1917), and in 1917 - in the Provisional Russian government (comrade of the Minister of Education). In May 1918 he left the Cadet Party.

Since 1912 he was an academician of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Since 1911 - a real state adviser.

public views

In equal measure, he is considered his compatriot both in Russia and in Ukraine. In 1918, he recognized the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic, but refused to accept Ukrainian citizenship from Hetman P.P. Skoropadsky and considered himself a Russian person, defended the unity of Russia and opposed the ideas of both Ukrainian independence and pro-Austrian and German ideas.

In 1919, Vernadsky hoped for the defeat of the Bolsheviks, about whose cruelties he heard in Kyiv - then already in 1920, in the Crimea, he made an entry in his diary completely in the spirit of the future "Smenovekhites":

I think that the interests and salvation of Russia now lie in the victory of Bolshevism in the West and in Asia. It is necessary to weaken the allies.

Vladimir Vernadsky reacted negatively to the Ukrainization campaign of the 1920s and 1930s, considering it to be violent. He called the language of Ukrainian signboards, as well as the writings of Professor M. S. Grushevsky, only “language”. Vernadsky considered his main cultural and social task to be the preservation of the dominant position of Russian culture in the UNR, the unification of Ukrainians who cherish Russian culture, and the development of ties with Russian scientific institutions.

Family

George and Nina Vernadsky. Poltava, 1903

In 1886, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky married Natalia Egorovna Staritskaya (1862-1943), with whom he lived for more than 56 years.

The family had two children, both of whom died in exile in the United States:

• Son George (1887-1973) - one of the leaders of the "Eurasianism" movement, became a well-known researcher of Russian history in the USA.
• Daughter Nina (1898-1985) - worked as a psychiatrist.

Membership in organizations

VI Vernadsky was elected a member of various societies, organizations and associations. This membership confirms the breadth of his scientific interests and the public recognition of his merits:

• 1886 - full member of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists
• 1886 - full member of the Free Economic Society
• 1888 - full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society
• 1889 - Corresponding Member of the British Association of Sciences
• 1889 - Member of the French Mineralogical Society
• 1890 - Member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, Honorary Member since 1911, Vice President since 1934
• 1891 - Member of the Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography at Moscow University, honorary member since 1913
• 1891 - Member of the Moscow Society of Agriculture
• 1893 - member of the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society, honorary member since 1914
• 1893 - Member of the Society of Experimental Sciences at Kharkov University
• 1900 - Member of the Russian Mining Society
• 1905 - member of the All-Russian League of Education
• 1905-1918 - member of the Cadet Party
• 1906-1906, 1908-1911, 1915 - Member of the State Council from the Academy of Sciences and Universities
• 1908 - Extraordinary academician in mineralogy of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, ordinary academician since 1911
• 1909 - Member of the Society for the Unity of the Peoples of Russia
• 1909 - Member of the Kh. S. Ledentsov Society for Promoting the Advances of Experimental Sciences
• 1911 - Member of the Russian Geographical Society
• 1911 - honorary member of the Tiflis Society of Naturalists
• 1911 - Member of the Society of Periodical Press and Literature
• 1912 - Member of the Society for the Study of Siberia and the improvement of the life of its population
• 1912 - member of the literary and artistic circle named after A. I. Herzen and its revision commission
• 1912 - Member of the Society for Assistance to Needy Writers and Scientists
• 1913 - honorary member of the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers
• 1915-1918, 1921-1930 - Chairman of the Board of the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia
• 1917 - Chairman of the Agricultural Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture
• 1917 - Chairman of the Commission on Scientific Institutions and Scientific Enterprises of the Ministry of Public Education
• 1918 - Member of the Russian Society for the Propagation of Natural Science Education
• 1918 - Chairman of the Commission for the study of the natural productive forces of Ukraine
• 1918-1919 - founding member and first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
• 1921 - head of the Commission on the history of science, philosophy and technology at the Russian Academy of Sciences
• 1926 - foreign member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts
• 1926 - foreign member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts
• 1926 - Member of the Geological Society of France
• 1926 - Member of the German Chemical Society
• 1926 - Fellow of the American Mineralogical Society
• 1926 - Chairman of the Commission on the History of Knowledge
• 1926 - Member of the Society for the Study of the History, Literature and Language of Ukraine
• 1926 - Member of the Tauride Society of History, Archeology and Ethnography
• 1928 - Corresponding Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Mineralogy Section
• 1929 - member of the Commission for the development of a new structure and charter of the USSR Academy of Sciences
• 1930 - Corresponding Member of the Czechoslovak Mineralogical and Geological Society
• 1930 - President of the Leningrad Society of Naturalists
• 1932 - head of the Meteoritic Commission
• 1930 - Chairman of the Commission for the Study of Heavy Water, USSR Academy of Sciences
• 1936 - Honorary Member of the Society of Biological Chemistry of India
• 1937 - Vice-President of the International Commission on Geological Time
• 1938 - foreign corresponding member of the Belgian Geological Society
• 1939 - Member of three departments of the USSR Academy of Sciences: geological and geographical, chemical, physical and mathematical sciences
• 1939 - Chairman of the USSR Academy of Sciences: Commission on Isotopes, Committee on Meteorites, Commission on Mineral Waters, Commission on the Study of Permafrost, Commission on the Study, Use and Protection of Groundwater, Commission on Determining the Geological Age of Rocks, Commission on the Problem of Uranium
• 1944 - honorary member of the All-Union Chemical Society named after D. I. Mendeleev
• 1944 - member of the Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the history of biological sciences

Addresses associated with V. I. Vernadsky

St. Petersburg

• 1881-1897 - studied and worked at the Imperial St. Petersburg University on Universitetskaya embankment;
• 1911-1914 - house of M. D. Kornilov, Vasilevsky Island, 14th line, 45;
• 1914-1934 - house of the Academy of Sciences, Vasilyevsky Island, 7th line, 2.

Moscow

• 1891-1911 - worked for 20 years at the Imperial Moscow University on Mokhovaya.
• 1897-1904 - Borisoglebsky lane, wing of house number 11.

Simferopol

• 1920-1921 - "Vorontsovsky" house in the Salgirk park.

Kazakhstan

• 1941-1943 - the village of Borovoe in the Kazakh SSR.

Memory

Portrait for the Bolshoi Theater on the 125th anniversary of V. I. Vernadsky

• Vernadology is a science that studies the biography, historiography and scientific heritage of V. I. Vernadsky

anniversaries

• In 2013, for the 150th anniversary of V. I. Vernadsky, under the editorship of Academician E. M. Galimov, the Russian Academy of Sciences published the most complete 24-volume Collected Works.

monuments

• On March 12, 1981, on the 118th anniversary of his birth, a monument to Vernadsky was unveiled in Akademgorodok (Kyiv).
• On April 23, 2013, a monument to its rector Vladimir Vernadsky was unveiled near the main building of the Taurida National University in Simferopol.
• On November 18, 2014, a monument to V. I. Vernadsky was unveiled in Tambov.

Institutions

• Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry. V. I. Vernadsky RAS.
• Tauride National University. V. I. Vernadsky in Simferopol.
• Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry. V. I. Vernadsky of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
• State Geological Museum. V. I. Vernadsky RAS, named in 1987
• Ukrainian Antarctic station "Akademik Vernadsky".
• National Library of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv.
• Moscow Lyceum No. 1553 ("Lyceum on the Don") was renamed the Lyceum. V. I. Vernadsky.
• Memorial Museum of Acad. V. I. Vernadsky (Moscow)
• Public Foundation "V. I. Vernadsky Non-Governmental Ecological Fund in the Republic of Kazakhstan"

Events

• The Commission for the development of the scientific heritage of Academician V. I. Vernadsky works under the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• All-Russian competition of youth research works named after V. I. Vernadsky

Named after V. I. Vernadsky

• Mountain in the Suntar-Khayata ridge in Yakutia
• Ice mountains in East Antarctica
• Volcano on the Kuril Island Paramushir (1946)
• Peninsula in the Sea of ​​Astronauts of Endbury Land in Antarctica (1957)
• Prospekt Vernadskogo (metro station, Sokolnicheskaya line) in Moscow
• Prospect Vernadsky (Moscow)
• Vernadsky Avenue in Simferopol
• Vernadsky Boulevard in Kyiv
• Vernadsky streets in various settlements of the states of the former USSR, for example, in St. Petersburg
• The railway station and the village of Vernadovka, the family estate of the Vernadsky family (that is, it was named not in honor of the scientist himself, but in honor of his ancestors), in the Pichaevsky district of the Tambov region
• Lunar crater on the far side of the Moon (named in 1970)
• Minerals: vernadite (1936), vernadskite (1910, currently not considered as an independent mineral)
• Research vessel "Akademik Vernadsky" (1968-2010).
• Type of algae - Psammothidium vernadskyi, Bukhtiyarova, Stanislavskaya, 2013.

Awards

• 1965 - The Vernadsky Gold Medal was established by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Awarded on March 12, every 3 years, for outstanding scientific work in the field of geosciences.
• 1998 - The Order of the Star of Vernadsky I, II and III degree was established by the International Inter-Academic Union (IMS)
• 06/09/2003 - by the decision of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Gold Medal named after. V. I. Vernadsky (Ukrainian Gold medal named after V. I. Vernadsky) - the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
• 2003 - The European Geophysical Society (later the European Union of Geosciences) established the Medal. V. I. Vernadsky, awarded annually.
• 2 scholarships named after V. I. Vernadsky for young scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

coins

• 02/25/1993. - The Bank of Russia issued a commemorative coin "Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky" for the 130th anniversary of his birth in the series "Outstanding Personalities of Russia"
• 03/26/2003. - The National Bank of Ukraine put into circulation a commemorative coin "Vladimir Vernadsky"
• 02/01/2013. - The Bank of Russia issued a commemorative coin "Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky" for the 150th anniversary of his birth in the series "Outstanding Personalities of Russia"
• 02/25/2013. - The National Bank of Ukraine put into circulation a commemorative coin "Vladimir Vernadsky" of the "Outstanding Personalities of Ukraine" series.

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, naturalist and thinker (1863-1945)

We are approaching a great upheaval in the life of mankind, which cannot be compared with everything that they have experienced before. The time is not far off when a person will receive atomic energy in his hands, such a source of power that will give him the opportunity to build his life as he wants ... Will a person be able to use this power, direct it to good, and not to self-destruction?

From the notes of V.I. Vernadsky

This question, asked by the great scientist almost a century ago, is still relevant today. Vernadsky realized that man is alienated from the Nature that created him. According to him, “due to the conventions of civilization, this inseparable and blood connection of all mankind with the rest of the living world is forgotten, and a person tries to consider the existence of civilized mankind separately from the living world. But these attempts are artificial and inevitably shatter when we approach the study of humanity in its general connection with all of Nature. Vladimir Ivanovich could not imagine that people would continue to consider the surrounding nature only as a means to satisfy their material needs, caring little about its condition, using scientific achievements almost exclusively for the extensive exploitation of its resources.

IN AND. Vernadsky is the founder of the complex of modern Earth sciences: geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiology, hydrogeology, etc. His natural scientific and philosophical interests were focused on the development of a holistic doctrine of the biosphere, living matter and the evolution of the biosphere into the noosphere. He is one of the creators of anthropocosmism, a system in which the natural (cosmic) and human tendencies in the development of science merge into a single whole.

The future scientist was born on March 12, 1863 in St. Petersburg, in the family of a professor of economics and statistics, Ivan Vasilyevich Vernadsky. When the boy was 5 years old, the family moved to his parents' native Ukraine. Vladimir Ivanovich considered his childhood spent in Kharkov to be one of the happiest periods of his life. It was then that he not only saw nature in all its essence, but “got used” to it.

Close people had a great influence on Vernadsky in childhood. This is the nanny, kind, wise, living by religious traditions; and uncle Evgraf Maksimovich Korolenko (writer V.G. Korolenko, Vladimir Ivanovich's second cousin), versatilely educated, passionate about evolutionary theory and the poetry of the starry sky and space; and older half-brother Nikolai, unusually gifted, who became the first teacher in the world of culture for the younger one; and the sisters who spoiled him; and loving mother; and a father who managed to instill love for the Motherland and respect for other countries and peoples.

Having learned to read early, Vladimir spent many hours reading books in his father's library, reading them indiscriminately. Petersburg classical gymnasium, where he studied from the third grade, was considered one of the best in Russia. Foreign languages, history, philosophy were well taught here. In the future, the future scientist independently studied several European languages.

However, Vernadsky's childhood was not a continuous holiday. The serious illness of his father, which almost cost him his life, and another shock - the death of Nikolai - caused deep feelings and thoughts. "My notes and memoirs of 1874" - so he called his notes in the year when he lost his brother and began to systematically keep a diary. They contain a confession: "Yes, there are two things that are not easy to endure - the grief that has befallen the family, and the loss of the Fatherland."

Two topics worried Vernadsky at that time most of all: the fate of the Slavs, its future (the Russian-Turkish war was going on during these years) and natural history (natural disciplines were taught in the gymnasium in an extremely limited and primitive form). Deciding that “it is impossible to go deep along two paths”, carried away by the world that opened up to him on the pages of the books of A. Humboldt, C. Darwin, Vladimir makes his choice. At the age of 18, he became a student of the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. The teachers of the student Vernadsky turned out to be creatively free, capable, outstanding scientists: chemists D. Mendeleev and A. Butlerov, physiologist I. Sechenov, botanist A. Beketov, and especially V. Dokuchaev, a soil scientist who gave impetus to the creation of a synthetic natural science that combines living and inanimate nature.

In addition to compulsory subjects, Vernadsky attends lectures at other departments; outlines an extensive program of self-education, which includes various social sciences: history, demography, philosophy, political economy. He is interested in non-standard concepts in natural science, the history of science, art, religious studies; he cooperates in the scientific-literary society; participates in expeditions and field observations.

In the university environment, Vladimir Ivanovich finds people who are close in spirit. A circle was organized, later called the "Brotherhood" (Vernadsky's wife, Natalya Yegorovna Staritskaya, was also a member of it). The members of this circle were in constant correspondence for 35 years and met at every opportunity. The "most important rules" of their own lives adopted by the members of the circle are also indicative. 1. Work as hard as you can. 2. Consume (for yourself) as little as possible. 3. Look at other people's troubles as if they were your own. These principles they faithfully observed throughout their lives.

Upon completion of his studies, Vernadsky becomes the curator of the Mineralogical Cabinet of St. Petersburg University. His research interests are mineralogy, crystallography, soil science. Then, to prepare for a professorship, he goes on a business trip abroad for several years. In Germany, England, Italy and France, the scientist is engaged in crystallography, seriously studying the literature on the history of the natural, humanitarian and technical sciences.

In 1890 he accepted an invitation from Moscow University. Soon both colleagues and students were convinced that an interesting person appeared next to them, an erudite teacher, a promising scientist. He defended his master's and then his doctoral dissertations; he has disciples and followers. In Moscow, Vladimir Ivanovich continues to communicate with members of the Brotherhood, meets with L.N. Tolstoy, philosophers brothers Trubetskoy, historian P.N. Milyukov, lawyer P.I. Novgorodtsev, engaged in social work.

Vladimir Ivanovich conducted extremely intensive scientific work. In his report at the XII Congress of Russian Naturalists and Doctors, he practically substantiated the beginning of a new science - geochemistry. In 1911, the university authorities issued an order forbidding student demonstrations. The arrests among students caused outrage among many professors - more than 120 teachers resigned. University left P.N. Lebedev, K.A. Timiryazev, V.I. Vernadsky, N.D. Zelinsky and other famous scientists.

Vernadsky returns to Petersburg. In 1912 he was elected an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Soon the First World War begins. Despite this, the scientist is developing a vigorous activity to create the first radiochemical laboratory in Russia. Having visited Canada (at the International Geological Congress), Vladimir Ivanovich seriously thinks about the impact of scientific and technological progress on the world around him and about the need to create a special commission to study natural productive forces.

By the beginning of 1917, the social crisis intensified in the country, but scientific work continued. At this time, Vladimir Ivanovich writes: “No matter how I subject my work to self-criticism, nevertheless, in this form, it seems to me, no one embraced nature.” At the same time, he is included in the work on the organization of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and becomes its first president (1919). Vladimir Ivanovich is trying to develop research, fighting for the life of the academy during the period of change of power, striving to gather a family scattered across southern Russia, to protect himself and his work, is seriously ill with typhus, continues teaching, and even becomes the rector of the Tauride University in Simferopol.

In the first post-revolutionary years, Vernadsky acutely experienced the catastrophe of Russian statehood, the destruction of culture: “I cannot imagine and cannot reconcile myself to the fall of Russia, with the transformation of Russian culture into Turkish or Mexican” (Diary of August 30, 1920). “Where to look for support? the scientist asked himself back in March 1918 and answered: “To search in the infinite, in the creative act, in the infinite strength of the spirit.” On this he stood to the end.

Vladimir Ivanovich returned to Petrograd in 1921. He was in charge of museums, headed work in a radiochemical laboratory, organized a meteorite expedition, gave lectures, and participated in comprehensive studies of the Kola Peninsula. And all this despite the threat to health and life. The meetings of the "Brotherhood" are resumed. At the beginning of 1922, the Radium Institute was finally opened.

An important stage in the life and work of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a business trip to France, which lasted more than three years. The scientist was elected professor at the Sorbonne and invited to lecture on geochemistry.

There he gets acquainted with the news of world science and the works of prominent scientists; discusses scientific issues with ER. Rutherford, P. Langevin, meets with philosophers Ed. Leroy and P. Teilhard de Chardin. He publishes "Geochemistry", prepares for publication one of his main classical works - "Biosphere". But most importantly, he creates the doctrine of the noosphere (from the Greek noos - mind) - "the sphere of the mind", which will develop and improve until the last days of life.

For the true triumph of the noosphere, according to Vernadsky, such preconditions are necessary that the world has not yet reached: “Two moments, therefore, are the prerequisites for the replacement of the anthroposphere by the noosphere: the domination of man over external nature and the domination in man himself of the forces of reason over lower instincts.”

As a scientist-naturalist, Vladimir Ivanovich did a lot for an objective study of the reality of the noosphere emerging in geological and historical time, as an outstanding thinker, he foresaw the essence of the “noosphere as a goal”, its tasks and driving forces. The colossal change in the order of things, which occurs from the intrusion of man into nature, the scientist put on an exact scientific basis, introducing the concept of cultural biogeochemical energy.

In the 20th century, according to Vernadsky, significant material prerequisites for the transition to the noosphere, the realization of the ideal of consciously active evolution, are ripening. Firstly, this is the universality of mankind, “the complete capture by man of the biosphere for life”, when the whole Earth, to the most unfavorable places, has been transformed and populated, man has penetrated into all its elements - earth, water, air. Secondly, the unity of mankind, when similar forms of scientific, technical, everyday civilization are created, the most remote corners of the Earth are united by the fastest means of transportation, effective lines of communication and information exchange. Thirdly, the massification of social, historical life, when "the masses of the people receive an ever-growing opportunity to consciously influence the course of state and public affairs." And finally, the growth of science, its transformation into a powerful geological force, the main force for the creation of the noosphere, fraught with the potential for development, virtually limitless.

As R.K. Balandin, who deeply studied the life and work of V.I. Vernadsky, the scientist, thinking about the noosphere, “hoped for its creation already in the 20th century. Reality disproved these dreams. Delusion of a genius? Unlikely. Only now, achieving what he meant by the noosphere turned out to be an unusually difficult task. It cannot be solved through the creation of more advanced technical means, technologies... On the way to the noosphere, a spiritual renewal of humanity is necessary, a transformation not so much of the environment as of the inner world of people. The idea of ​​the noosphere has heuristic potential, helping to compare reality with the ideal to which one should aspire.

Vernadsky himself, of course, was a man of the noosphere. He tried to do everything possible to develop scientific ideas and put them into practice. He worked for the benefit of science and all mankind.

The work capacity of the scientist is amazing. He worked until late old age for 10-12 hours a day and even more. Vernadsky wrote about his way of life:

I have a very good reference library left ... I know (for reading) all the Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages ​​\u200b\u200b...

I never practiced at night, but in my youth I studied until 1-2 o'clock in the morning. I always got up early. I never sleep during the day and never lie down during the day to rest unless I am sick. I do not smoke and have never smoked, although my family - my father, mother and sisters - all smoked. I do not drink (except - rarely - wine). I drank vodka once in my life. After my long stay in France, I accepted the timing of the scientists there. I get up early in the morning (at 6-7 o'clock), go to bed at 10-10.5 o'clock.

I love fiction and follow it closely. I love art, painting, sculpture. I love music very much, I experience it very much... I consider the best form of recreation to be walking, first in a boat, traveling abroad...

At the beginning of 1926, Vladimir Ivanovich returned to Leningrad, to the academy. He focused on the activities of the Radium Institute, the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia. His work "Biosphere" is out of print, in which he substantiates the idea that "the biosphere is a bio-inert natural body, which is characterized by a regular organization of the movement of matter and energy under the influence of living matter." The book was a huge success not only in scientific, but also in wide cultural circles.

Having delved into scientific problems, Vernadsky begins to develop several ideas at the same time. First of all, it is the idea of ​​time. Another idea concerns the problem of cosmic life, acquiring significance not only for the scientist or philosopher, but for every thinking person. The third is the formation of the foundations of radiogeology, the science of geological age.

Since 1935 Vernadsky has been living in Moscow and working on books. Until 1938, he often went on business trips abroad, and his children lived in exile: son Georgy, professor of history at Yale University in the USA, daughter, a psychiatrist who married archaeologist N.P. Toll, settled in Prague. Each of them insistently called his parents to him. But Vladimir Ivanovich invariably returned home. He himself did not suffer the tragic fate of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (which shocked Vernadsky), but many of his students were repressed and exiled. The scientist, despite what was happening, showed great personal courage: he protested and interceded about them before those in power, as far as possible materially and morally helped those arrested and exiled.

But Vernadsky sees in these years the positive results of state and economic construction in Russia, he understands that the Bolshevik government, paradoxically, saved the Russian statehood, that the authoritarian, despotic power became that painful, but necessary treatment that pulled together the disintegrated as a result of the revolution and fratricidal war of part of the country in order to revive them and bring them, albeit by force, to a new unity and a new form. “Now it is historically clear that, despite many sins and unnecessary cruelties that corrupt them, on average, they led Russia to a new path”

Vernadsky is one of the most prominent scientists in the field, which is considered a strategic state. In June 1940, having received information from the United States from his son about work on "new nuclear energy", it was Vladimir Ivanovich who initiated a special academic commission that developed a national nuclear program and submitted it to the government. During the war years, Vernadsky, together with the oldest academicians, was evacuated to Borovoe (Kazakhstan). He considers everything that happens from the point of view of the dear idea of ​​the noosphere. “All the fears and reasoning of the inhabitants, as well as representatives of the humanities and philosophical disciplines about the possible death of civilization, are associated with an underestimation of the strength and depth of geological processes, which is the transition of the biosphere to the noosphere that we are currently experiencing,” the scientist wrote.

In Borovoe, he is engaged in "final" affairs: he composes the "Chronicle" of his life, the history of the origin and development of his ideas and practical deeds. He consciously prepares for the last transition and, just as consistently and methodically as he did everything in life, he draws a line under it: “In general, I work steadily all the time. I'm getting ready to die. No fear. Breakdown into atoms and molecules. If something can remain, then it passes into another living thing, not some single forms of "transmigration of souls", but in disintegration into atoms (and even protons). Vivekananda's faith is irrefutable in the present state of science. An atomically living individual — including myself — is a special self” (Diary of December 27, 1942). But one difficult personal test still awaits him: on February 3, 1943, his closest friend and assistant, his wife Natalya Yegorovna, dies of a sudden illness, with whom they lived in perfect harmony for 57 years. The last article of the thinker is “A few words about the noosphere”. Vernadsky died on January 6, 1945.

The doctrine developed by Vernadsky allowed mankind to come closer to understanding that the predominance of material values ​​over spiritual ones, the strengthening of the technosphere is a dead end in the development of modern civilization. It leads to the degradation of life, culture and human personality.

As R. K. Balandin notes, it is necessary to strive to ensure that Homo sapiens is reasonable not by self-name, but by loyalty to the ideals of the noosphere: goodness, justice, beauty, reason. In this regard, the life experience of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky himself is very instructive. He had limited material resources and unlimited spiritual needs. Only with such a combination on Earth can a magnificent biosphere and humanity worthy of it be preserved.

From the diary of V.I. Vernadsky

It is impossible to postpone the concern for the great and eternal until the time when the possibility of satisfying their elementary needs will be achieved for everyone. Otherwise it will be too late. We will place material wealth in the hands of people whose ideal will be "bread and circuses." Eat, drink, do nothing, enjoy love. It is good to live in the name of what? And for what? We must look for higher ideals. "Love for humanity" is a small ideal when you live in space.

Vernadsky Vladimir Ivanovich (1863-1945)

Russian mineralogist, crystallographer, geologist, geochemist, historian and organizer of science, philosopher, public figure. The father of the historian G.V. Vernadsky. Born in St. Petersburg. The childhood of the future scientist passed in Ukraine.

In 1876 the family returned to St. Petersburg. He entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of St. Petersburg University, where the founder of soil science V.V. Dokuchaev.

In 1885 he defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate and, at the suggestion of Dokuchaev, became an employee of the mineralogical cabinet at the university.

In 1888 Vernadsky was sent to Europe, trained in Munich and Paris.

From 1890 to 1898 lectured and worked with students as a Privatdozent at Moscow University. Developing the theory of the genesis of minerals. In 1891 he defended his master's thesis. The following year he published his "Course of Crystallography".

He traveled a lot in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, conducting geological surveys. In 1897, he defended his doctoral dissertation on crystallography "Phenomena of sliding of crystalline matter."

He was elected a professor at Moscow University. His scientific career developed in ascending order. In 1906, Vernadsky was the head of the Mineralogical Museum, and in 1908 he became an extraordinary academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He lived alternately in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

In December 1909, he spoke at the XII Congress of Naturalists and Physicians with a report on "The Paragenesis of Chemical Elements in the Earth's Crust", which marked the beginning of the science of geochemistry, which, in Vernadsky's understanding, was to become the history of "terrestrial atoms".

In March 1912, Vernadsky was elected an ordinary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in 1914 he became director of the Geological and Mineralogical Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In 1915, he acted as the founder and chairman of the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces (KEPS), created to coordinate the development of the mining industry. The commission began publishing "Proceedings", which contained a large amount of material on the raw materials of Russia.

Vernadsky actively participated in the public life of Russia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, was a member of the Zemstvo and constitutional-democratic movements, together with P.B. Struve, N.A. Berdyaev and others established the Union of Liberation.

After the events of February 1917, he was appointed chairman of the scientific committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and elected a professor at Moscow University. In November 1917 he was forced to hide and left for Poltava.

In Kyiv in 1918 under the Hetman PL. Skoropadsky, Vernadsky took up the organization of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, was elected its president. He was also involved in the formation of the academic library.

After the arrival of the Bolsheviks, he was invited to the post of professor of mineralogy at the Taurida University in Simferopol, in September 1920 he became its rector. Met with P.N. Wrangel, asked for assistance to the university. Subsequently, he got the opportunity to engage in scientific work in the Soviet Union.

Having accepted an invitation from the University of Paris, at the beginning of the summer of 1922 he left with his wife and daughter through Prague (where his daughter remained to study) to Paris. He lectured at the Sorbonne, published the book "Geochemistry" in French.

He worked in the laboratory of M. Sklodowska-Curie. In March 1926 he returned to Leningrad at the insistence of his student A.E. Fersman and President of the Academy of Sciences of the Federation Council. Oldenburg. Relying on Oldenburg, Vernadsky took the initiative to restore the Commission on the History of Knowledge, again became the director of the Radium Institute and the head of KEPS. Under KEPS, he organized the Department of Living Matter, and then the Biogeochemical Laboratory (BIOGEL) (1928).

At the end of 1926, above.1, the work of the scientist "Biosphere" was published, in 1940 - "Biogeochemical Essays".

In the late 1930s Vernadsky headed the Committee on Meteorites and Cosmic Dust, the Commission on Isotopes, participated in the work of the International Committee on Geological Time, etc. In June 1940, he initiated the creation of the Commission on Uranium and thereby actually initiated the nuclear project in the USSR.

In 1944, the last work of the scientist "A few layers about the noosphere" was published. Vernadsky died in Moscow on January 6, 1945

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky(1863-1945) - a brilliant mineralogist, crystallographer, geologist, founder of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiogeology, the doctrine of living matter and the biosphere, the transition of the biosphere into the noosphere, an encyclopedic scientist who was deeply interested in philosophy, the history of religions and social sciences.

IN AND. Vernadsky was born in St. Petersburg on March 12, 1863, in the family of a well-known economist, professor at the St. Petersburg Alexander Lyceum Ivan Vasilyevich Vernadsky.

After graduating from the gymnasium in 1881, Vladimir Vernadsky became a student of the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. In those years, D.I. Mendeleev, A.N. Beketov, V.V. Dokuchaev, I.M. Sechenov, A.M. Butlerov.

DI. Mendeleev opened the world of science to students, showed the power of scientific thought and the importance of chemistry. V.V. Dokuchaev was his supervisor in geology and mineralogy, which Vernadsky chose as his specialty.

In his student years, Vernadsky began to study the fundamental problems of the Earth sciences. Under the influence of V.V. Dokuchaev, he developed ideas about the relationship of living beings with the environment, taking into account their active influence on the processes of soil formation. Under the leadership of V.V. Dokuchaeva V.I. Vernadsky participated in soil expeditions to the Nizhny Novgorod and Poltava provinces, where he passed his first geological route and wrote his first scientific work.

Along with the scientific work of Vernadsky embraces the spirit of freethinking characteristic of the capital's students. He actively participated in the public life of the university, worked in the student Scientific and Literary Society, in a circle for the study of literature for the people. Acute social events, in which the students were actively involved, since then have never left Vernadsky indifferent. He turned out to be an active participant in them, regularly publishing articles in which he raised pressing issues of university education and the general situation of the country. Vernadsky consistently defended the autonomy of higher education, the right of the Council of Professors to manage the entire process of university life, and the broad freedom of academic unions. Defending the interests of the university corporation, V.I. Vernadsky actively collaborated at the beginning of the 20th century with the newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti, as the most popular among the Russian intelligentsia.

At the university, he developed a lifelong friendship with the future major scientists: botanist, soil scientist and geographer A.N. Krasnov, historians brothers S.F. and F.F. Oldenburgami, A.A. Kornilov, I.M. Grevsom, D.I. Shakhovsky and others. In 1886, the closest friends of V.I. Vernadsky are united in the "Brotherhood" - a kind of educational circle, the motto of which was: "Work as much as possible, consume as little as possible for yourself, look at other people's needs as your own."

In 1885, Vernadsky graduated from St. Petersburg University with a Ph. A year later he married Natalia Egorovna Staritskaya
, with whom they lived together for 56 years "soul to soul and thought to thought." Their family had two children: son Georgy Vladimirovich Vernadsky (1887-1973), a well-known researcher of Russian history, daughter Nina Vladimirovna Vernadskaya-Toll (1898-1985), a psychiatrist; both died in exile in the United States.

In 1890, Vernadsky was invited to the Department of Crystallography and Mineralogy of Moscow University, and was approved as the curator of the mineralogical cabinet. In 1891, a master's thesis was defended at St. Petersburg University on the problems of the structure of silicon compounds, and in 1897 V.I. Vernadsky, having defended his doctoral dissertation on the problems of crystallography, and the following year he was approved as an extraordinary professor.

At the Moscow University V.I. Vernadsky worked for 20 fruitful years. In the methodology of teaching mineralogy V.I. Vernadsky became an innovator: he developed a new course in which he proposed a genetic classification of minerals and their communities, taking into account the physicochemical conditions of their formation, and not properties. He separated crystallography from mineralogy, considering that crystallography is based on mathematics and physics, while he considered mineralogy as the chemistry of the earth's crust, associated with geology.

Vernadsky with his students in the field studied natural processes, making excursions almost every summer: several times he was in the Urals, in the Crimea, on
Ukraine, in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, in the Dombrowski basin of Poland and in central Russia. In addition, the scientist often traveled abroad. He traveled to the German Ore Mountains, England, France, the vicinity of Naples, Greece and Sweden.

“The Moscow period of my scientific life was purely mineralogical and crystallographic. But already at that time, geochemistry was emerging, and in the study of the phenomena of life, I approached biogeochemistry. Already at this time, I immediately entered into the study of radioactivity. Much thought through the influence of Le Chatelier in thermodynamics. The history of science, especially Russian and Slavic, and philosophy deeply interested me,” wrote V.I. Vernadsky at the end of his life.

During this period, V.I. Vernadsky is doing serious scientific work. B. L. Lichkov writes about the Moscow period of Vernadsky’s work: “The time of V. I. Vernadsky’s activity from 1890 to 1911 in Moscow was one of the remarkable periods of his life, years, he created the mineralogical museums of the university and the Higher Engineering courses. In addition, he created the Scientific Research Mineralogical Institute. In the same years, his original ideas in the field of the doctrine of mineral chemical compounds arose and took shape, the basis of his mineralogical system and views on the genesis of minerals was created ... He begins to deal with problems related not to the chemistry of compounds, but to the chemistry of elements, as a result of which the first beginnings of geochemistry were born. He trained a whole galaxy of students, among them Academician A.E. Fersman, Professor Ya.V. Samoilov, corresponding member K.A. Nenadkevich and many other prominent scientists.

In addition to the scientific activities of V.I. Vernadsky was actively engaged in socio-political and state activities, which were closely connected, first of all, with the Tambov region. The Vernadovka estate, located in the Tambov province, he visited almost every summer from 1886 to 1910. In 1892, the scientist was elected a member of the Morshansky district and Tambov provincial zemstvo assemblies. In the zemstvo, he dealt mainly with issues of public education, worked on school commissions, and spoke at zemstvo meetings. IN AND. Vernadsky actively participated in the fight against hunger in the Tambov province, created a committee to help the peasants. Thanks to his efforts, 121 canteens were opened for 50-55 people each, they fed 6,256 people, including 11 special canteens for the youngest children. IN AND. Vernadsky helped create zemstvo schools and hospitals, and opened public libraries. He devoted himself to public service consciously, proceeding from a sense of personal responsibility for the fate of the country, believing that the principles of zemstvo self-government should become the basis for the development of Russian state life.

At the beginning of the XX century. was a member of the Bureau of zemstvo vowels, who prepared and organized zemstvo congresses. In November 1904, as a delegate of the Tambov Zemstvo, V.I. Vernadsky participated in the work of the second all-Russian zemstvo congress in St. Petersburg, and in July 1905 - in the work of the congress of zemstvo vowels in Moscow. These congresses changed the entire political atmosphere in the country, under their pressure the tsarist government was forced to introduce civil and political freedoms, issue new Basic Laws of 1906 (constitution) and establish the first Russian parliament - the State Duma, which opened in April 1906.

Actively involved in the political life of the country within the framework of the activities of the constitutional democratic party, V.I. Vernadsky becomes one of the leaders of the liberal direction in the struggle for the introduction of the principles of European democracy in Russia.

During the first Russian revolution, V.I. Vernadsky takes an active part in the preparation and holding of the Constituent Congress of the Constitutional Democratic Party, which advocated the judicial protection of human rights, the need to create a state with a limited monarchy, the need for cultural autonomy for nations and the abolition of the death penalty. Until 1919 he remained a member of the Central Committee of the Kadet Party.

Supporting the struggle of professors for the autonomy of universities, in 1906 he was elected to the State Council - the upper house of the Russian parliament and worked in it until March 1917. In protest against the dissolution of the Duma, V.I. Vernadsky filed a petition to withdraw from its membership, but in March 1907 he was re-elected to the State Council.

In 1911 V.I. Vernadsky, in solidarity with the dismissed professors, resigned. He never returned to Moscow University and continued his activities in the system of the Academy of Sciences. In 1915 V.I. Vernadsky is re-elected to the State Council and participates in the last meeting, at which, on behalf of the elected members of the council, a telegram was sent to the Headquarters with a proposal to abdicate the throne and transfer power to the Provisional Committee of the State Duma.

During the October Bolshevik coup, Vernadsky heads the Ministry of Public Education in the Provisional Government. He perceives the victory of the Bolsheviks as a tragic defeat for democracy and, under the threat of arrest, is forced to leave for Ukraine.

In Ukraine, V.I. Vernadsky organized serious scientific work, became the main ideologist, organizer, and in 1918 the first elected president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The modern National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to this day retains at its core the ideas and structure laid down by V.I. Vernadsky. Created during the civil war in Kyiv, the library is currently the largest National Library of Ukraine, which bears the name of V.I. Vernadsky.

After moving to the Crimea in 1919, Vernadsky lectured on geochemistry at the Tauride University, and being elected rector, he actively fought for the preservation of university education in Russia. He emphasized that “with the destruction of Russia, which we are experiencing, the existence of a strong and active center of Russian culture and world knowledge, which is a living university, is a factor of great importance, helping to restore a single state and arrange order in it, organize a normal life ...”

At that time, in the world of physics, chemistry and technology, after the discovery and explanation of the phenomenon of radioactivity, the ideas about the immutability of the atom were rejected. Since 1896, the world's leading scientists began to intensively study radioactivity. In 1910, at the general meeting of the Academy of Sciences, V.I. Vernadsky made a report "The task of the day in the field of radium", in which he outlined a whole program of geological and laboratory research aimed at searching for uranium ores and mastering the energy of atomic decay. At the suggestion of Vernadsky, the first Radiological Laboratory in Russia was created at the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Academy of Sciences. “Before us, in the phenomena of radioactivity, sources of atomic energy are revealed, millions of times greater than all those sources of forces that were drawn to the human imagination. ... With hope and apprehension we peer into a new ally and defender," he writes prophetically.

In January 1922, on the initiative of V.I. Vernadsky, the Radium Institute was created in Petrograd, of which he was appointed director and held this position until 1939, after which the director was his student academician V.G. Khlopin.

Back in 1906, V.I. Vernadsky was elected an adjunct in mineralogy of the Academy of Sciences, in 1912 - a full member of the Academy of Sciences.

Having entered the First World War, Russia began to experience a particularly acute shortage of strategically important types of raw materials, and in 1915 V.I. Vernadsky, together with other scientists, created and for a long time headed the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia at the Academy of Sciences (KEPS), which played an outstanding role in the study of the country's natural resources and the development of science and the economy of the state. In the journal Russkaya Mysl in 1916, he wrote: “These reserves of energy, on the one hand, are made up of the strength, both physical and spiritual, which lies in the population of the state. The more it possesses knowledge, the greater its ability to work, the more simplicity is given to its creativity, the more freedom for the development of the personality, the less friction and brakes on its activity - the more useful the energy generated by the population is, no matter what those external, outside the person, lying conditions that are in the environment of nature, its environment. The spiritual energy of man is so great that there has never been a case in history that it could not generate useful energy due to a lack of natural material.

Initially, the activities of KEPS were aimed at solving urgent defense tasks of the Russian state. The leading scientific forces of the country were involved in the work, and collections of basic information on all types of raw materials began to appear systematically. Vernadsky's closest assistant in KEPS was A.E. Fersman. Gradually, numerous scientific institutes grew out of KEPS.

Since 1916, the first works of V.I. Vernadsky dedicated to "living matter". Studies of living matter in order to determine the average chemical composition of plants and animals, their biomass and productivity for their subsequent quantitative geochemical assessment were started by V.I. Vernadsky in December 1918 in Ukraine in the laboratory of technical chemistry of Kiev University and continued in 1919 at the Staroselskaya biological station. In 1920, during the work of VI Vernadsky at the Tauride University, biogeochemical research was organized at the Salgir fruit-growing station, a laboratory was created at the university on the problem of "The role of living organisms in mineralogenesis."

In 1928, the Biogeochemical Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences (BIOGEL) emerged from the "department of living matter" at KEPS on the basis of the Radium Institute, where the theoretical, methodological and experimental foundations of the biogeochemical direction of research were laid. Becoming its first director, V.I. Vernadsky remained with him until the end of his life - for 16 years.

At the end of 1921, the rector of the Sorbonne, P.E. Appel invited V.I. Vernadsky to give a course of lectures on geochemistry at the Sorbonne. The lectures brought Vernadsky wide popularity in scientific circles. At the initiative of the listeners, they were published as a separate book in French called "Geochemistry" (La Géochimie, 1924), which was subsequently published several times in different languages. In "Geochemistry" Vernadsky reveals not just the structure of the earth's crust in the atomic section, but the history of atoms, the fate of chemical elements in the eternal and regular coordinated cycle that occurs on Earth.

In addition, at that time, the scientist worked experimentally at the Radium Institute, which was headed by Maria Curie-Sklodowska, and took part in the study of the radioactive mineral curite from the Belgian Congo.

The scientist spent more than three very fruitful years on a business trip. He formalized his ideas about the role of living matter in the earth's crust. Fundamentally important scientific works have been prepared for publication: the monograph "Biosphere" (1926) in Russian, "The History of the Minerals of the Earth's Crust", the article "Living Matter in the Chemistry of the Sea", as well as a whole series of publications on problems of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. At the same time, Vernadsky for the first time approached the realization of scientific thought as a planetary phenomenon, the result of which was the article "Autotrophy of Humanity" (1925).

The main ideas of V.I. Vernadsky about the biosphere developed by the beginning of the 20s. and were published in 1926 in the book "Biosphere", consisting of two essays: "The Biosphere in Space" and "Region
life." According to Vernadsky, the biosphere is an organized, dynamic and stably balanced, self-sustaining and self-developing system. The main feature of its organization is the biogenic migration of chemical elements produced by the forces of life, the energy source of which is the radiant energy of the Sun. Together with other geospheres, the biosphere forms a single planetary ecological system of a higher order, in which a single planetary organization operates.

At the beginning of the war, in 1941, V.I. Vernadsky with a group of academicians was evacuated to Borovoe, Kazakh SSR, where he stayed for two years. N.E. died and was buried here. Vernadskaya. In recent years, the scientist has been working on a great work "The chemical structure of the Earth's biosphere and its environment." The work was published only in 1965. After returning to Moscow in 1944, his article “A few words about the noosphere” was published about the transformation of the appearance of our planet under the influence of human mind and labor.

IN AND. Vernadsky has been using the concept of "noosphere" since the mid-1930s. He came to the conclusion that the emergence of man with his scientific thought was a natural stage in the evolution of the biosphere. As a result of human activity, the biosphere must inevitably change radically and move into a new state, which is called the noosphere - the sphere of the mind (noos - from the Greek mind). This means that the noosphere is the geological shell of the planet Earth developing under the control of Reason, under the influence of conscious human activity.

In the noosphere, a person transforms the Earth not only in accordance with his needs, but also taking into account the laws of the biosphere; noosphere - a natural body, the components of which will be the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and the organic world, transformed by intelligent human activity (later, outer space will also have to be included in the noosphere). In accordance with the laws of the noosphere, social and state life will have to be built, scientific creativity and innovation will become the main meaningful and constructive driving forces. IN AND. Vernadsky firmly believed in the inevitability of just such a development of the biosphere, and therefore, until the end of his days, he looked at the future of mankind with great optimism.

The great life of Academician V.I. Vernadsky, until the end of his days filled with intense creative work, helping people, charity, saving science and people under the Soviet regime, ended in Moscow on January 6, 1945. He is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.