Translated material
Real botanist
On February 3, 2015, it turned 90 to Nikolai Nikolaevich Tselovy - an outstanding Russian botanist, chief scientific employee of the Botanical Institute named after V. L. Komarova RAS, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a modest and kind person.
N. N. was born and spent his childhood in Tambov. By botanics, he began to be interested in 10 years under the influence of books from the family library. He determined the plants collected in the vicinity of the city by the “Flora of Central Russia” by P.F. Maevsky. The hobby was not quite boyish, and N. N. did not tell anyone about him except the closest friend. A botanist from Moscow State University T. B. Vernader, who shot a cottage near Tambov, met his herbaric fees. To her surprise, she almost found no mistakes in the definitions of plants.
N. N. had a childhood in a hungry time, he mentioned this in his autobiography [1] . The sensations of childhood have been preserved for life and once made themselves felt in an unexpected environment. Once in the early 1990s, a group of employees of the institute, including N. N., returned in an electric train from a botanical tour. It was a time when the shops were already filled, but a lot of researchers were still not affordable. A slightly tipsy apologet of the “Stalin Order”, which began to annoyfully recall the “cheap caviar”, hooked on us. N. N., usually calm, suddenly broke out. In several phrases, he intelligibly explained how it was with groceries in Tambov during his childhood, how the inhabitants of the city caught and ate almost all mollusks in the Tsne River, and his uncle-hunter delighted his family with shot sparrows ...
In 1943, after graduation, N. N. entered the artillery technical school. After its end, he became a technician in the unit of self -propelled artillery attitudes (it was from those times that he remembers the words of the song “Tanks Rumbled on the Field”), took part in the battles in Poland and Germany, including Berlin, where he celebrated Victory Day ...
... After many years, N. N. at the conference met with the German nerd. It turned out that in 1945 he served as a teenager in the Volkssturm, which very much annoyed “self -propelled guns” - they were supposed to repair N. N. Two botanists exchanged memories and moved to the discussion of scientific issues. It turned out that they have a very close approach to the concept of the species.
After demobilization, N. N. wanted to study at Moscow University (and even entered the correspondence department), but in the end, for family reasons, he began to study at Kharkov University. During his studies, he was interested in both botany and entomology, but still made a choice in favor of studying plants. The subject of his thesis was the cereals of Crimea. During one of the student expeditions, he met the famous botanist S. V. Yuzepchuk from the Botanical Institute named after V. L. Komarova (bin), who appreciated the knowledge and enthusiasm of N. N. and promised to contribute to its admission to the graduate school.
According to the preliminary distribution, N. N. had to go to teach to Western Ukraine. But the letter from the bin helped, and he was sent to graduate school, although here it was not without excitement. At the entrance exam on Marxism-Leninism, N. N. could not answer an additional question: “Who substantiated the meaning of the brain for thinking?” (It was necessary to answer “Ivan Petrovich Pavlov”) and received the “four”. But additional graduate schools were allocated, and N. N. was nevertheless enrolled.
The theme of his candidate dissertation was the monograph of one of the births of cereals. The study of this large species and an economically important family is one of the traditions of Bin and its predecessors, coming from the first director of the Botanical Museum of Karl Trinius. But in the early 1950s, there were no specialists in the institute at the institute, and N. N. was to become a successor of this tradition.
N. N. defended the dissertation ahead of schedule. In addition, he was lucky - he managed to get a place in the hostel, in which several "academic" apartments were converted. This made it possible to stay in Leningrad and continue to engage in science.
After the graduate school, N. N. joined the work on the final volumes of the Flora of the USSR - a scientific project that has far ahead of similar foreign initiatives and became an example to them to a certain extent. But the most important scientific achievement of N. N. is, of course, his work on the systematics of cereals, and it is in this capacity that many colleagues know him. In 1976, the monograph “Cereals of the USSR” was released, prepared based on the materials of his doctoral dissertation [2] . The Academy of Sciences did not want to print such a voluminous monograph, and only thanks to the persistence of academician E. M. Lavrenko (also “Kharkiv”) she saw the light. In 1983, this book was translated into English [3] , and until now it can be found on the desktops of all the systematic of the world, more or less seriously engaged in cereals. In addition, N. n. The most complete and logical “domestic” system of this family [4, 5] was developed - and this is not counting the numerous articles on individual problems of cereal systematics.
All that was done by N. N. in the systematics of Zlakov would be more than enough to create a name in science. However, his scientific interests included more and more plants of plants, new and new territories. The reason for this is simple: he loves plants. To a large extent, thanks to his personal participation, the Flora of Eastern Europe was successfully completed (begun as Flora of the European part of the USSR)-N. N. was the editor of the 9–11th volumes of this publication and the most active author. He took an active part in the preparation of the Summarian “Vascular Plants of the Soviet Far East”, the English -speaking Flora of China and in a number of other similar projects.
But that's not all. N. N. is always interested in the flora of the area in which he finds himself. In childhood, these were Tambov, in his student years - the surroundings of Kharkov. Since 1951, he has been actively studying the flora of the North-West of European Russia-a territory comparable to a small European country. The result of this was the original “determinant of the vascular plants of North-West Russia”-the most cited, according to the RSCI, the regional floristic summary in Russia. The study of the flora of the surroundings of St. Petersburg often occurred (and sometimes still occurs) during the famous one-day trips of N. N., in which employees of Bina, other botanical institutions take part. Such trips are very popular among young people, because in this way in our science, knowledge and experience “from master to student” is transferred in our science.
N. N. - A real field botanist. He happened to take part in many expeditions in the territory of the former USSR. In 1981, he participated in a multi -month expedition on the research vessel “Academician Vernadsky”, during which he met the tropical flora, visited Kubu twice. In 1960, he participated in the legendary expedition to search for a snowy man. Of course, the botanists and zoologists who participated in this generously funded expedition were not interested in a mythical creature, but collected material for their research, although they were interfered with the periodically running fans of “cryptical biology”.
Huge experience, work with various groups of plants, numerous expeditions led N. N. to a number of theoretical generalizations. This is the support of the hypothesis of “expanding Earth”, the idea of the colonial nature of the body of the highest plants, the justification of the primary of the grassy vital shape of flowering plants, the great role of hybridization in their evolution and much more [6] . Many of these ideas were contrary to the dominant, including the views of academician A. L. Takhtajyan, to argue with whom in Bin in the 1960-1980s was not forbidden, but not encouraged. N. N. does not compromise in scientific discussions, however, always carefully listening to those who do not share his approaches. However, he is extremely liberal (and, of course, popular) as an opponent to defend dissertations, believing that the desire in an unexpected not very prestigious science should be encouraged. One of the poems is in the Japanese style-composed by colleagues to the 80th anniversary of N. N., notes this feature:
Someone brings something to the review again.
I read it - nonsense!
But I remembered the cherry in color -
Okay, let him defend!
The high scientific level of N. N. has long been recognized, and his name since the beginning of the 1990s has been called among candidates for members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, he usually refused to nominate in favor of those whose election "was needed for the institute." And only in 1999, at a meeting of the Scientific Council of Bin, the famous geobotanist V.I. Vasilevich proposed to nominate N. N. to the vacancy of a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, adding: “ And you, Nikolai Nikolaevich, do not dare to refuse” !
Like many representatives of his generation, N. N. writes in Russian, and his formal bibliometric indicators in international citation systems are quite modest. However, Famous Professor Tzvelev has high authority in world science, especially among cereal specialists. It is no coincidence that N. N. was elected a foreign member of the Linneum Society in London - no more than 50 botanists and zoologists can be awarded this honor. In the anniversary congratulation from colleagues from the royal Botanical Garden in Kew (Great Britain) it was said: "We use your books every day."
The 90th anniversary of N. N. was celebrated by a meeting of the Scientific Council of Bin and an informal holiday in his native unit-the department of the herbarium of higher plants. This anniversary has become the holiday of Botanika-not the most prestigious science in our time, nevertheless still who has its adherents.
The anniversary passed, and for N. N. everything again went its own way. He earlier appears at his workplace - after all, there is still a lot of do it! Soon the “cereals of Russia” will be completed.
1. Brief autobiography // Tsvelev N. N. Problems of theoretical morphology and evolution of higher plants. M.; SPb.: Partnership of the scientific publications of KMK, 2005.
S. 393–404.
2. Tsvelev N. N. Zlaki of the USSR. L.: Science, 1976.
3. Tzvelev NN Grasses of the Soviet Union. New Dehli: Oxonian Press, 1983.
4. Tselov N. N. System of Zlakov (Poaceae) and their evolution. L.: Science, 1987. (Komarovsky readings, XXXVII).
5. Tzvelev Nn the System of Grasses (Poaceae) and Their Evolution. // Botanical Review, 1989. Vol. 55. P. 141–204.
6. Tsvelev N. N. Problems of theoretical morphology and evolution of higher plants. M.; SPb.: Partnership of the scientific publications of KMK, 2005.