Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
: Володимир Іванович Вернадський,
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
: Владимир Иванович Вернадский) ( - January 6 1945) was a soviet mineralogist and geochemist whose ideas of
noosphereNoosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought"...
were an important contribution to
Russian cosmismRussian cosmism was a cosmocentric philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century. It entails a broad theory of natural philosophy combining elements of religion and ethics, a history and philosophy of the origin, evolution and future existence of the cosmos...
. He also worked in
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
where he founded the
National Academy of Science of Ukrainethumb|200px|National Academy of Sciences of UkraineThe National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is the highest state research organization in Ukraine. Like many other academies, it has a two-tier membership: academicians, and corresponding members. There is also an additional membership category...
. He is most noted for his 1926 book
The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize
Eduard SuessEduard Suess was a geologist who was an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana and the Tethys Ocean.Born in London to a Saxon merchant, when he was three his family relocated toPrague, then to...
’ 1885 term
biosphereThe biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth. From the broadest biophysiological point of view, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements...
, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth.
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
: Володимир Іванович Вернадський,
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
: Владимир Иванович Вернадский) ( - January 6 1945) was a soviet mineralogist and geochemist whose ideas of
noosphereNoosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought"...
were an important contribution to
Russian cosmismRussian cosmism was a cosmocentric philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century. It entails a broad theory of natural philosophy combining elements of religion and ethics, a history and philosophy of the origin, evolution and future existence of the cosmos...
. He also worked in
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
where he founded the
National Academy of Science of Ukrainethumb|200px|National Academy of Sciences of UkraineThe National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is the highest state research organization in Ukraine. Like many other academies, it has a two-tier membership: academicians, and corresponding members. There is also an additional membership category...
. He is most noted for his 1926 book
The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize
Eduard SuessEduard Suess was a geologist who was an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana and the Tethys Ocean.Born in London to a Saxon merchant, when he was three his family relocated toPrague, then to...
’ 1885 term
biosphereThe biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth. From the broadest biophysiological point of view, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements...
, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth. He was a founding father of several new disciplines, including
geochemistryThe field of geochemistry involves study of the chemical composition of the Earth and other planets, chemical processes and reactions that govern the composition of rocks and soils, and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space, and their...
,
biogeochemistryThe field of biogeochemistry involves scientific study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment , and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space...
, and radiogeology. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.
Biography
Vernadsky was born in
Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd and Leningrad...
,
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, on March 12, 1863, of mixed
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
and
UkrainianUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in Ukraine, or more broadly—citizens of Ukraine...
parents. His father, a descendent of Ukrainian Cossacks, had been a professor of
political economyPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
in
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
before moving to Saint Petersburg, and his mother was a noble woman of
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
ethnicity (Vernadsky himself considered himself both
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
and
UkrainianUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in Ukraine, or more broadly—citizens of Ukraine...
, and had some knowledge of the Ukrainian language).
Vernadsky graduated from Saint Petersburg University in 1885. As the last mineralogist had died in 1887 in Russia, and Dokuchaev, a soil scientist, and A.P. Pavlov, a geologist, had been teaching mineralogy for a while, Vernadsky chose to enter Mineralogy. He wrote to his wife Natasha Vernadsky on 20 June 1888 from Switzerland:
- "...to collect facts for their own sake, as many now gather facts, without a program, without a question to answer or a purpose is not interesting. However, there is a task which someday those chemical reactions which took place at various points on earth; these reactions take place according to laws which are known to us, but which, we are allowed to think, are closely tied to general changes which the earth has undergone by the earth with the general laws of celestial mechanics. I believe there is hidden here still more to discover when one considers the complexity of chemical elements and the regularity of their occurrence in groups..."
While trying to find a topic for his doctorate, he first went to Naples to study with the
crystallographerCrystallographer could refer to someone who practices:*X-ray crystallography*Crystallography...
Scacchi, who was senile at that time. The senility of Scacchi lead Vernadsky to go to Germany to study under Paul Groth. There, Vernadsky learned how to use the modern equipment of Groth who had developed a machine to study the optical,
thermalA thermal column is a column of rising air in the lower altitudes of the Earth's atmosphere. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of the Earth's surface from solar radiation, and an example of convection. The Sun warms the ground, which in turn warms the air directly above it....
, elastic, magnetic and electrical properties of
crystalA crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is crystallography...
s, as well as using the physics lab of Prof. Zonke, who was also working on crystallisation.
Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the
noosphereNoosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought"...
and deepened the idea of the
biosphereThe biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth. From the broadest biophysiological point of view, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements...
to the meaning largely recognized by today's scientific community. The word biosphere was invented by
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
n
geologistFor other uses, see Geologist .A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth and terrestrial planets...
Eduard SuessEduard Suess was a geologist who was an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana and the Tethys Ocean.Born in London to a Saxon merchant, when he was three his family relocated toPrague, then to...
, whom Vernadsky had met in 1911.
In Vernadsky's theory of how the Earth develops, the
noosphereNoosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought"...
is the third stage in a succession of phases of development of the earth, after the
geosphereThe term geosphere is often used to refer to the densest parts of Earth, which consist mostly of rock and regolith.The term originally applies to the four nested geospheres identified since Aristotle's "Meteorologica" with the states of terrestrial matter: solid , liquid , gas , and plasma...
(inanimate matter) and the
biosphereThe biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth. From the broadest biophysiological point of view, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements...
(biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human
cognitionCognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought". Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions...
fundamentally transformed the biosphere. In this theory, the principles of both life and cognition are the essential features of the earth's
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
, and must have been implicit in the earth all along. This systemic and geological analysis of living systems complements
Darwin'sCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
theory of
natural selectionNatural selection is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations...
, which looks at each individual species, rather than at its relationship to a subsuming principle.
Vernadsky's visionary pronouncements were not widely accepted in the West. However, he was one of the first scientists to recognize that the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere result from biological processes. In the 1920s, he published works arguing that living organisms could reshape the planets as surely as any physical force. Vernadsky was an important pioneer of the scientific bases for the environmental sciences.
Vernadsky was the founder and the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
(1918), was the founder of the
National Library of Ukrainian StateThe V.I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine is the main academic library and main scientific information centre in Ukraine, one of the world's largest national libraries. It is located in the capital of the country - Kyiv. The library contains about 15 million items...
and worked closely with the Tavrida University in
CrimeaCrimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the only autonomous republic of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name.The territory of Crimea was conquered and controlled many times throughout its history...
. During the
Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
, he hosted the gatherings of the young intellectuals who later founded the émigré Eurasianist movement. Vernadsky was loyal to the Russian state and was opposed to
Ukrainian independenceThe Ukrainian War of Independence was a series of military conflicts between Ukrainian, Anarchist, Bolshevik, Central Powers forces of Germany and Austro-Hungary, the White Russian Volunteer Army, and the Second Polish Republic forces for control of the modern Ukraine, after the February Revolution...
.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Vernadsky played an early advisory role in the
Soviet atomic bomb projectThe Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb began during World War II in the Soviet Union. The USSR tested its first nuclear weapon in August of 1949.-Nuclear physics in the Soviet Union:...
, as one of the most forceful voices arguing for the exploitation of
atomic energyAtomic energy is energy produced by atoms.*Nuclear energy, the energy resulting of potential difference of the nuclear force*Nuclear reaction, a process in which two nuclei or nuclear particles collide, to produce different products than the initial products; see also nuclear fission and nuclear...
, the surveying of Soviet
uraniumUranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table that has the symbol U and atomic number 92. Besides its 92 protons, a uranium nucleus can have between 141 and 146 neutrons. The most common uranium isotopes are U-238 and U-235 . A uranium atom has...
sources, and having
nuclear fissionIn nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts, often producing free neutrons and lighter nuclei, which may eventually produce photons...
research conducted at his Radium Institute. He died, however, before a full project was pursued.
Vernadsky's son
George VernadskyGeorge Vernadsky , Russian: Гео́ргий Влади́мирович Верна́дский) was a Russian-American historian and an author of numerous books on Russian history.- European years :...
(1887-1973) emigrated to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
where he published numerous books on medieval Russian history as well as medieval Ukrainian history and modern Russian history.
One of the main avenues in both
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
and the Tavrida National University in
CrimeaCrimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the only autonomous republic of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name.The territory of Crimea was conquered and controlled many times throughout its history...
(
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
) are both named after Vladimir Vernadsky.
Works (selected)
- Geochemistry, published in Russian 1924
- The Biosphere, first published in Russian in 1926. English translations:
- Oracle, AZ, Synergetic Press, 1986, ISBN 0-907791-11-5, 86pp.
- tr. David B. Langmuir, New York, Copernicus, 1998, ISBN 0-387-98268-X, 192pp.
- Essays on Geochemistry & the Biosphere, tr. Olga Barash, Santa Fe, NM, Synergetic Press, ISBN 0-907791-36-0, 2006
Diaries
- Dnevniki 1917-1921: oktyabr 1917-yanvar 1920 (Diaries 1917-1921), Kiev, Naukova dumka
Naukova Dumka is a publishing house in Kiev, Ukraine. Оne of the oldest scientific and academic publishing houses in USSR, and continues its operations in Ukraine. The name translates from Ukrainian as "scientific thought". Naukova Dumka was established by the National Academy of Sciences of...
, 1994, ISBN 5-12-004641-X, 269pp.
- Dnevniki. Mart 1921-avgust 1925 (Diaries 1921-1925), Moscow, Nauka
Nauka is a Russian publisher of academic books and journals. Established in the USSR in 1923, it was called USSR Academy of Sciences Publisher until 1963. Until 1934 the publisher was based in Leningrad, then moved to Moscow. Its logo depicts an open book with Sputnik 1 above it.Nauka was the main...
, 1998, ISBN 5-02-004422-9, 213pp.
- Dnevniki 1926-1934 (Diaries 1926-1934), Moscow, Nauka, 2001, ISBN 5-02-004409-1, 455pp.
- Dnevniki 1935-1941 v dvukh knigakh. Kniga 1, 1935-1938 (Diaries 1935-1941 in two volumes. Volume 1, 1935-1938), Moscow, Nauka, 2006,ISBN 5-02-033831-1,444pp.
- Dnevniki 1935-1941 v dvukh knigakh. Kniga 2, 1939-1941 (Diaries 1935-1941. Volume 2, 1939-1941), Moscow, Nauka, 2006, ISBN 5-02-033832-X, 295pp.
See also
- Gaia theory (science)
- Noosphere
Noosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought"...
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man...
- Russian philosophy
Russian philosophy is a broad field, dominated by religious and humanistic figures such as Vladimir Soloviev and social or political philosophers such as Vladimir Lenin...
External links
- The grave of Vernadsky
- Behrends, Thilo, The Renaissance of V.I. Vernadsky, Newsletter of the Geochemical Society, #125, October 2005, http://gs.wustl.edu/archives/gn/gn125.pdf PDF retrieved Jan. 16, 2006
- Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich, GEOCHEMISTRY AND THE BIOSPHERE. http://www.synergeticpress.com/vernadsky.html
- Electronic archive of writings from and about Vernadsky (Russian) http://vernadsky.lib.ru/