XI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2019

Biography of Vladimir Vernadsky

Vladimir Vernadsky was born in St. Petersburg on March 12, 1863 in an intelligent, respected family. Vernadsky's mother came from a noble family, and his father - according to family superstitions - was a descendant of Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, on the basis of which it can be argued that the great scientist had Ukrainian roots.

Five years later, his family moved to Kharkov. The Petersburg classical gymnasium, where Vernadsky studied from the third grade, was one of the best in Russia. Here foreign languages, history, philosophy was well taught. Later Vernadsky independently studied several European languages. Then he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. In 1885, Vladimir graduated from the university and was left there for scientific work. In March 1888, Vernadsky went on a business trip abroad, first to Vienna, then to Naples and, finally, to Munich, where he began working in the laboratory of crystallography. After the end of the school year, Vernadsky embarked on a long journey through Europe to familiarize himself with mineralogical museums. He visited Austria, Switzerland, France and participated in the 5th session of the International Geological Congress in England. Here he was accepted into the British Association of Sciences.

Returning to Russia, Vernadsky became assistant professor of the Department of Mineralogy, Moscow University. Soon he was invited to Moscow University by the head of the department of mineralogy and crystallography. At Moscow University V.I. Vernadsky began teaching exactly forty years after his father, here he had at his disposal a mineralogical study and a well-equipped chemical laboratory, and from the second semester Vernadsky began to lecture at the physical, mathematical and medical faculties. Having defended his doctoral thesis on crystallography, Vernadsky becomes first extraordinary, and in 1902 an ordinary professor.

In the laboratory of Vernadsky, which he called the Institute, there were students and assistants, students of female courses. At the same time, Vernadsky’s talent as a historian of science manifests itself, he writes “On the Meaning of Lomonosov's Works in Mineralogy and Geology,” which was highly appreciated by specialists. Vernadsky devotes a lot of time to the mineralogical part of the Museum of the Academy of Sciences - he buys and brings collections of stones from his trips, in 1908 participates in the session of the British Association of Sciences in Dublin, and then begins to work on the problem of radioactivity.

In 1909, Vernadsky toured Italy, collected a large amount of minerals, and another result of the trip was that the Italian naturalist next year called the mineral Vernadskite discovered by him. At the same time, he spends much of his time teaching at the university, at the higher female courses, and at the Shanyavsky Private University established in 1908. The Moscow period of Vernadsky’s work at the university ended in 1911, when the government defeated the cadet nest, with the result that one third of the teaching staff left the university in protest. In September of the same year, Vernadsky moved to Petersburg.

Here Vernadsky became the director of the Geological and Mineralogical Museum of the Academy of Sciences. On the initiative and under the chairmanship of Vladimir Ivanovich in 1915, a Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia at the Academy of Sciences (KEPS) was created. This unique scientific organization has united many prominent Russian scientists. The commission carried out a huge research work, produced monographs and reference books, organized a number of complex expeditions. Numerous scientific institutes subsequently separated from it: Soil, Geographical, Radium, Ceramic, Optical, etc. Vladimir Ivanovich, elected chairman of the academic council at the Ministry of Agriculture in 1916, continued research, publishing articles on mineralogy, geochemistry, minerals, on the history of science, organization of science, meteoritics.

From the end of 1917, Vernadsky lives and works in the Ukraine and southern Russia, in 1921 he returned to Petrograd. From 1922 he continued his scientific and pedagogical activities in France and Czechoslovakia, in 1926 he returned to Leningrad. In 1935 he moved to Moscow, from 1941 he was evacuated to Borovoy Kazakh SSR, returned to Moscow in 1943. In the last years of his life, Vernadsky worked on the final book - “scientific testament to descendants”, “book of life”, as he she called her, - “The chemical structure of the biosphere of the Earth and its environment”, selected material for the book of memoirs “The Experienced and Reconsidered”. IN AND. Vernadsky died in Moscow on January 6, 1945, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Vernadsky's contribution to science

Vernadsky received world fame thanks to the works that became the basis of many new scientific directions in geochemistry, biochemistry, radiology. He laid the foundations of modern ecology. Vernadsky is the author of works on the philosophy of natural science and science of science, the creator of the doctrine of the biosphere and its evolution, of human influence on the environment and of the transformation of the biosphere into the noosphere, the sphere of mind. The teaching of Vernadsky on the biosphere and the noosphere plays a significant role in the modern scientific picture of the world. This doctrine became evidence of the transition of natural science from the analytical stage of development, marked by the emergence of the basic sciences (mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc.), to a synthetic stage. In creating the theory of the biosphere, not only was Vernadsky's ability to synthesize the theoretical achievements of various fields of natural science, but also the vast practical experience he had gained in numerous geological, mineralogical, soil, and radiological expeditions. The biosphere, according to Vernadsky, is an integral biogeochemical shell of our planet, which develops according to its internal laws. The main factor, the main geological force that forms the biosphere and its systems, is living matter, performing diverse geochemical and planetary-cosmic functions.

In Vernadsky's theory of the Earth's development, the noosphere is the third stage in the earth's development, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition will fundamentally transform the biosphere. In this theory, the principles of both life and cognition are essential features of the Earth's evolution, and must have been implicit in the earth all along. This systemic and geological analysis of living systems complements Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which looks at each individual species, rather than at its relationship to a subsuming principle.

References

Энциклопедия «Известные ученые», раздел «История науки», Вернадский Владимир Иванович [Электронный ресурс] URL: https://goo.gl/1xReWc, дата доступа: 14.03.2019.

Владимир Вернадский, биография, история жизни, причины известности, [Электронный ресурс] URL: https://goo.gl/56avWp, дата доступа: 14.03.2019

Вернадский, Владимир Иванович [Электронный ресурс] URL: https://goo.gl/uSP8iG, дата доступа: 14.03.2019