One of us

At the very end of January, the Coordinating Council of the St. Petersburg Union of Scientists (SPBSU) decided to create a working group to preserve the scientific heritage of a famous Russian scientist with an international reputation, zoologist-endomologist and evolutionist, Honorary Worker of Higher Education, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Vladilen Evgenievich Kipyatkov, one of the founding members SPBSU.

V.E. Kipyatkov was born on March 10, 1949 in Leningrad, in the family of an electrical engineer. Soon the family moved to the other end of the country, to Vladivostok, where the childhood and youth of Vladik passed. Here he showed an interest in living nature, especially in insects. In 1966, Vladilen returned to Leningrad and after the successful passage of entrance exams became a student of the biological and soil faculty of Leningrad State University, then still named after A.A. Zhdanova. Soon he chose the Department of Entomology, with which he did not part until the end of his life.

In addition to insects, he was attracted by evolutionary theory and ecology. As part of a small group of classmates (zoologists and geneticists) in 1968, he became an active member of the secret evolutionary club, who met in the evenings at the Department of Entomology, which the administration of the faculty did not even suspect. Soviet biology then passed from the dominance of Lysenkovschina, who had recently publicly created its outrages, to real science. Among biologists, genetics was considered the most advanced science, approximately like nuclear physics. She was surrounded by a halo for a long and undeservedly pursued by party authorities and all sorts of scoundrels, but as a result, who won the struggle for scientific truth and justice. All this brought up the appropriate attitude to the “Marxism-Leninism” and the official ideology planted by the authorities.

Already in his student years, V.E. Kipyatkova has formed an interest in three important areas of biology, which he then studied his whole life. This is evolutionary theory, sociobiology and ecology of public insects. In 1971, he graduated with honors from the university and was enlisted as a graduate student of the Department of Entomology. Three years later, he defended his thesis, in which he first proved the existence of the anti -aodic regulation of ranges and the phenomenon of the social regulation of seasonal development among ants. Then he went the path of a junior researcher, assistant and associate professor of the department. In 1997, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation “Annual Muravy Development Cycles”, in which he summarized his studies of the laws of the seasonal development of this favorite group of social insects. In the same year he became a professor, and in 2006-the head of the department.

As a scientist V.E. Boilings successfully combined experimental methods with field. It also had an inventive vein, thanks to which he not only successfully “talked” with numerous devices in the laboratory, but also invented cunning devices for working in nature. He studied his ants in various regions of our great homeland: from the mountains of Kopetdag to the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, from the Carpathians and Crimea in Ukraine to the polar White Sea, from the Primorsky Territory to Kolyma. In 2007, he even visited the Tropical Islands of Trinidad and Tobago near South America.

As a teacher, he read courses on general and evolutionary ecology, insect sociobiology, as well as on evolutionary theory. In 1995 and 1998, he was twice awarded the title of Soros Associate Professor, and in 2003 - the Sorosov professor. In 1989, V.E. Kipyatkov organized a public insect section in the framework of the All -Union Entomological Society, which in 1994 in Paris turned into the Russian section of the International Union for the Study of Public Insects. Heading it as a permanent president, spent eight colloquiums, spent a lot of time and effort on editing the publications of the section.

The fall of the Soviet “iron curtain” and the abolition of the previous, sometimes idiotic restrictions allowed V.E. Kipyatkov successfully integrated into the international scientific community. Since 1994, he has repeatedly performed on various congresses in Europe, has been to the USA and Japan. Despite many difficulties, he managed to generally adapt to the harsh realities of Russian capitalism, as well as to new forms of financing scientific research. He regularly won grants of Russian and international science support funds, which allowed him to move forward in his research.

Already in his student years, Vladik proved himself to be socially sensitive, he was outraged by the hypocritical policy of the Soviet authorities. He followed the dissident movement, read the forbidden A.I. Solzhenitsyna, offered it to me and probably to his other friends. Let me remind you that in those years, the spread of “anti -Soviet” was brutally punished and, at least, one could lose their favorite job. Such cases in Leningrad were well known.

The breadth of scientific interests and impeccable scientific reputation, seriousness and accuracy, conscientiousness and responsibility, openness and goodwill, cheerful morality and principles attracted a wide range of people both among colleagues and among friends and simply acquaintances. It was always possible to rely on him and be sure that he would bring the work he had begun to the end, if he promised.

Vladik undoubtedly possessed organizational abilities. His involvement in events of various kinds was expressed in the most sometimes unexpected forms. So, he became an avid member and actually the head of the K-102 beer student club, created back in February 1968 and still existing, despite the venerable age of the participants. At the first anniversary meeting, after graduation, classmates unanimously awarded Vladik the joking-angry title “Emperor of the course”.

His honest life position did not allow him to put up with an ever -increasing bureaucracy in science and higher school, including the university who he beloved by him, with attempts to restrict the rights of scientists and teachers, with the departure from the principles of democracy and freedom in his native country. When in 2009, the rector’s order appeared at the St. Petersburg University, tightening the procedure for sending articles abroad, V.E. The boiling water one of the few openly opposed and initiated the legality of such a “twisting of nuts” in the St. Petersburg Union of Scientists.

He was very worried, seeing a neglect of science from the authorities, the destruction of scientific traditions and ethics, a mass departure abroad, on the one hand, and wildness, the heyday of quackery and pseudoscience, the offensive clericalization of the Russian state and society, on the other hand.

In the anniversary year of Darwin (2009) V.E. The boiling water was created by the Darwin discussion seminar under the auspices of St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg State University, conceived by him as a platform for a wide discussion of modern evolutionism with the involvement of youth. The seminar gathered up to 150 people, even priests and journalists visited it.

In recent years, Vladilen Evgenievich has long and seriously ill. He passed away on September 28, 2012. His relatives and friends who love his friends and colleagues orphaned ...

On December 17, 2012, the 20th meeting of the Darwin seminar was held, dedicated to the memory of its founder prof. V.E. Kipyatkov.

L.Ya. Borkin ,
Honorary Chairman of the Board of the St. Petersburg Union of Scientists,
Member of the Presidium of the Russian Association of Assistance to Science