Founder of biogeochemistry who reconceived the Earth through the biosphere and noosphere
“Everything good in my life I owe to Natasha. We lived 56 years soul to soul, thought to thought.” — diary entry on the day of his wife's death, 1943.
Starting as a mineralogist, he founded the new science of biogeochemistry and formulated the concepts of the biosphere and noosphere, making him a forerunner of modern Earth system science. He served as the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1918) and organized the Soviet Radium Institute, laying the institutional groundwork for early Soviet uranium and atomic research. Once a Kadet Central Committee member and deputy education minister in the Provisional Government, he stayed in the USSR under the Academy's protection and won the Stalin Prize in 1943.
Career timeline
1898–1911Professor of Mineralogy, Moscow University
1906–1917Kadet Central Committee member & State Council deputy
1917Deputy Minister of Education, Provisional Government
1918–1921First President, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
1922–1939Director, Radium Institute of the USSR
1927–1945Director, Biogeochemical Laboratory, Academy of Sciences
The anarchist sailor who dissolved the Constituent Assembly with 'The guard is tired', an icon of the revolution who fell in battle at 24
Tauride Palace, 4 a.m., 5 January 1918. 'The guard is tired. I ask you to leave the chamber.' With those words, after 13 hours of debate, the Russian Constituent Assembly closed forever.
An anarchist revolutionary from the Baltic Fleet. He took part in the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917, and on 5 January 1918, as chief of the guard at the Tauride Palace, he dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly with the immortal words 'The guard is tired,' becoming a legend of the revolution. During the Civil War he fought the Don, Krasnov, and Denikin forces as a machine-gunner and armored train commander, though he never joined the Bolshevik Party. Killed by Denikin's artillery in July 1919, he was posthumously revived as a hero of Soviet songs, poems, and films.
Career timeline
1915Conscripted into the 2nd Baltic Fleet crew, entered engine school
1916Deserted fearing arrest, worked under alias as stoker and assistant mechanic on Black Sea merchant ships
1917.05Elected delegate to the 1st Congress of the Baltic Fleet (Tsentrobalt)
1917.06Defended Durnovo Dacha against government troops; arrested, sentenced to 14 years; escaped Kresty Prison in September
1917.10Naval Revolutionary Committee member; led capture of the Admiralty and storming of the Winter Palace
1918.01Chief of the guard at Tauride Palace — dissolved the Constituent Assembly
1918.03Commander of Birzula fortified district; fought Austro-German forces
1918.06–09Commander of the 1st Yelansky Infantry Regiment in Kikvidze's division; fought Krasnov's Cossacks on the Tsaritsyn front
1918.10–1919.04Underground work in Odessa under alias Viktors; after uprising, chairman of the merchant marine union
1919.05–07Commander of armored train Khudyakov; suppressed Grigoriev revolt, killed by artillery on the Denikin front
