User:Wenge098/Vladimir Vernadsky

Early life

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Vladimir Vernadsky, Paris 1889

Vernadsky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, on 12 March [O.S. 28 February] 1863 in the family of the native Kyiv residents Ivan Vernadsky and Anna Konstantinovich. Ivan was a Russian Imperial economist and editor of a censorship and serfdom opposed liberal journal and Anna Konstantinovic was a music instructor as well as a Russian noblewoman of Ukrainian Cossack descent. According to family legend, his father's ancestors were Zaporozhian Cossacks. Ivan Vernadsky had been a professor of political economy at St. Vladimir University in Kyiv before relocating to Saint Petersburg where he served as an Active State Councillor and worked in the Governing Senate.

In 1868, his family relocated to Kharkiv, where he continued his education. His father gifted scientific books that including The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and Cosmos by Alexander Humboldt, which was his introduction to early evolutionary theory in relation to nature. Along with the books, his uncle Evgraf Korolenko, a retired civil servant, mentored Vernadsky, taking him on long walks under the stars to discuss the earth and the cosmos. This introduction turned Vernadsky's attention from humanities to science. In 1873 he entered the Kharkiv provincial gymnasium. With the mineralogist position at Saint Petersburg State University vacant, and in the absence of a dedicated professor, soil scientist Vasily Dokuchaev and geologist Alexey Pavlov, Vernadsky temporarily taught the subject. He made the decision to fill this role because the proximity to his childhood home allowed him to care for his recently widowed mother. This influenced Vernadsky's decision to specialize in minerology. Vernadsky went on to study as faculty at Saint Petersburg State University in the Physics-Mathematics program where he specialized in crystallography and mineralogy. Vernadsky graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1885 with a thesis on isomorphous mixtures in minerals.

In 1886, Vernadsky married a woman named Natalya E. Staritskaya, although there is not much documented information on her as an individual. On 20 June 1888, Vernadsky wrote to his wife, from Switzerland, expressing his perspective on scientific inquiry:

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 the human mind will solve, and which is extremely interesting. Minerals are remains of those chemical reactions which took place at various times on earth; these reactions take place according to laws which are not always known to us, but which, we are allowed to think, are closely tied to general changes which the earth has undergone as a planet. The task is to connect the various phases of changes undergone by the earth with the general laws of celestial mechanics.

In 1881–1890, he traveled through Europe, studying in Germany, France, England, Switzerland, and Italy and studying the museums of Paris and London, and worked in Munich and Paris. While abroad, he studied under Henry Le Chatelier , Paul Von Groth, and Ferdinand André Fouqué, supporting his decision to focus his studies in crystallography and minerology. While trying to find a topic for his doctorate, he first went to Naples to study under crystallographer Arcangelo Scacchi, who was senile by that time. Scacchi's condition led Vernadsky to go to Germany to study under Paul Groth, curator of minerals in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Vernadsky learned to use Groth's modern equipment, which included a machine to study the optical, thermal, elastic, magnetic and electrical properties of crystals. He also gained access to the physics lab of Leonhard Sohncke (Direktor, Physikalisches Institut der Universität Jena, 1883–1886; Professor der Physik an der Technischen Hochschule München 1886–1897), who was studying crystallisation during that period. In the year 1888, Vernadsky had the opportunity to attend the 4th International Geological Congress held in London before moving on to study under Fouqué and Chatelier in Paris. In 1889, when Dokuchaev declined to attend, Vernadsky took over the World Exhibition in Paris on his behalf. His exhibit featured a display on Russian soils where he earned a gold medal for his organization and presentation.

In his childhood, his father had a huge influence on his development, he very carefully and consistently engaged in the upbringing and education of his son. It was he who instilled in Volodymyr interest and love for the Ukrainian people, their history and culture. The future scientist recalled that before moving from Kharkiv to St. Petersburg, he and his father were abroad and in Milan, they read about a circular in Pyotr Lavrov's newspaper "Forward" that forbade printing in Ukrainian in Russia. In his memoirs, he wrote:

This made a huge impression on my father, and the conversations related to this had a strong effect on me at the time. My father told the history of Ukraine in a completely different way than it was taught in the gymnasium. He often mentioned that Petersburg was built on the bones of Ukrainians (Cossacks from Ivan Mazepa's regiments built Petersburg). After returning to St. Petersburg, I tried to familiarize myself with Ukrainian literature. In his father's library, he found scattered issues of Osnovy and other Ukrainian publications. Obtained Ukrainian books from second-hand booksellers, and received some from abroad. He asked his father in detail about Shevchenko, Kulish, Maksymovich, Kvitka-Osnovianenko, whom he knew personally, as well as about the Cyril-Methodiev brotherhood, about Kostomarov, etc.

In St. Petersburg, a 15-year-old boy noted in his diary on 29 March 1878:

Ukrainians are terribly oppressed. Even in Austria, Drahomanov was not allowed to publish a newspaper in Ukrainian. In Russia, it is completely forbidden to print books in my native language. During the holidays, I will take care of her with all respect. In Kyiv, when a portrait of Shevchenko is seen in a house, it is taken away.

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Impact of Early and Later Life Experiences on Scientific Theory

Vernadsky was born into a Ukrainian family of intellects and progressives. His grandfather was a military doctor, who was honored by Napoleon for his humanitarianism, and his father was freed his serfs before serfrom was officially abolished. Throughout Vernadsky's life, there were many influential moments that led to many of his important philosophical and scientific beliefs that paved the way for the biogemochemistry, minerology, and chemistry that exists today. Vernadsky's father's background in politics encouraged Vernadsky's own interests in humanitstic and itnerdisciplinary perspectives in scientific fields, and was a big reason why this was his first choice of study before he made his way to minerology. In addition to his father's background, the gift of the scientific books from him to Vernadsky was also his first introduction to evolutionary theory and the interconnected of nature. His upbringing was emersed in his Ukranian culture, as he was surrounded by the music from his mother, and the intellectual discussion with his uncle and father. While at school at St. Petersburg, Vernadsky was engaged in student activism and was even a part of the Priyutino Brotherhood, which emphasized ethical living and societal reform.

When Vernadsky was teaching at Moscow University in 1891, the link between biology and biochemistry was made to inspire his theories in the biogeochemistry realm. His work with various collections, such as the Freyesleben collection, helped to advance the way that collections had been previously organized. His methods transitions this organization from a description classification, to a mechanism and deeper chemical explanation classification. This new organization strategy emphasized Vernadsky's personal view thae the Earth's crust is a massive chemical labratory forming minerals.

Vernadksy was not shy to participating in politics. Close friendships with those involved in revolutionary groups, such as those of Ivan Pokhitonov, also helped to expose him to different political ideas and underground literature. Vernadsky was in the opinion that society could be improved through science and that it must not be kept hidden and isolated from the public. His philosophies reflected this sentiment and they smoothly integrated natural science, philosophy, and ethics together, promoting freedom of thought and intellectual change. Throughout his life and career, Vernadsky emphasized this idea of sharing scientific thought and knowledge as he remained deeply connected to different universities with the main goal and supporting and mentoring young scientists. He was in the strongest belief that the key to national progress and reform was through the support of academic institutions.

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Scientific activities

In 1898, Vernadsky moved to Moscow in order to teach at Moscow University. As head of the mineralogical office, he had the opportunity to restore the Freyesleben collection where he fully cataloged and systemized it. During his work as a professor at Moscow University, he conducted 65 field excursions across Russia with students to Siberia, Urals, Caucasus, and Crimea.

Through his work, Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the noosphere and deepened the idea of the biosphere to the meaning largely recognized by today's scientific community. The word 'biosphere' was invented by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, whom Vernadsky met in 1911.

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.

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. During 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 a member of the Russian and Soviet Academies of Sciences since 1912 and was a founder and first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, Ukraine (1918). He was a founder of the National Library of Ukrainian State and worked closely with the Tavrida University in Crimea. During the Russian Civil War, he hosted gatherings of the young intellectuals who later founded the émigré Eurasianism movement.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s Vernadsky played an early advisory role in the Soviet atomic bomb project, as one of the most forceful voices arguing for the exploitation of nuclear power, the surveying of Soviet uranium sources, and having nuclear fission research conducted at his Radium Institute. He died, however, before a full project was pursued. Vernadsky's scientific work was also instrumental in the Russian-Soviet scientific tradition, and was a prominent figure in the realm of biogeochemistry.

On religious views, Vernadsky was an atheist. He was interested in Hinduism and Rig Veda.

Vernadsky's son George Vernadsky (1887–1973) emigrated to the United States where he published numerous books on medieval and modern Russian history.

Vernadsky family in Poltava in 1908. Right-left: Vladimir, his daughter Nina, wife Nataliia and her brother Pavlo, son George.

The National Library of Ukraine, the Tavrida National University in Crimea and many streets and avenues in Ukraine and Russia are named in honor of Vladimir Vernadsky.

UNESCO sponsored an international scientific conference, "Globalistics-2013", at Moscow State University on 23–25 October 2013, in honor of Vernadsky's 150th birthday.

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