Memory

Armen Leonovich Takhtajyan

On November 13, 2009, in the 100th year of his life, an outstanding scientist, evolutionary biologist and botanist academician Armen Leonovich Takhtajyan died.

A.L. Takhtajyan was born on June 10, 1910 in the city of Shusha (Nagorny Karabakh). His school and student years are associated with Georgia. He studied at a school in Tiflis, and then graduated from the All -Union Institute of Subtropical Cultures in Sukhumi. He defended his thesis in Leningrad in 1937 and a doctoral dissertation in 1943 in Yerevan. In 1936-1948 He taught at Yerevan State University; In 1943-1948 - Director of the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR.

After the notorious August session, the 1948 Armen Leonovich was fired from the post of director of the Institute of Botany and the head of the department at the University of Yerevan and was forced to leave Yerevan. Thanks to the support of many famous botanists, who knew well and appreciated the scientific achievements of Armen Leonovich, he received an invitation to the University of Leningrad - at that time one of the few still preserved "islands" of free thought in biological science.

From 1949 to 1961 A.L. Takhtajyan-Professor of the Department of Morphology and Systematics of Plants of the Biological and Holive Faculty of Leningrad University, and from 1951 to 1954-dean of the biological and soil faculty.

In December 1954 A.L. Takhtajyan becomes an employee of the Botanical Institute. V.L. Komarova Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was elected to the post of head of the Paleobotaniki department and led this unit over 35 years. Since 1972 - Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1976 to 1986 A.L. Takhtajyan was the director of the Botanical Institute. V.L. Komarova Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

A.L. Takhtajyan is an author of over 300 scientific works on the systematics, evolution and geography of plants, including 20 books. He developed a system of flowering plants and the scheme of the floristic zoning of the Earth. His last book “Flowering Plants” (“Flowering Plants”) was published in the publishing house of Springer Verlag in July 2009, four months ago.

Without exaggeration, we can say that the development of botany in the second half of the XX century. Passed under the influence of ideas and works by A.L. Takhtajyana. His name is known to all specialists in the world working in the field of botany and evolutionary biology.

A.L. Takhtajyan was buried in the Armenian site of the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg.