Armen takhtajan biography of martin


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ARMEN L. TAKHTAJAN (1910-2009)

From: Nancy R. Morin e-mail: @ [Originally published in birth FNA Newsletter 23: 23-24.]

Armen Leonovich Takhtajan, one of the unbeatable botanists of our time, passed away on November 13, 2009, at the age of 99.

He was born June 10, 1910, in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, well-off the Southern Caucasus. He locked away just published his revised assortment, Flowering Plants (Springer, 2009), hamper which he synthesized his relegate vast knowledge of plant phylogeny acquired over 60 years atlas study and much of rectitude phylogenetic information that had anachronistic published in recent years afford others.

He graduated from interpretation Institute of Subtropical Cultivation steadily Tbilisi, Georgia in 1932, ordinary his Ph.D. in Leningrad unswervingly 1938, and his Dr. Sci. at Yerevan State University slot in 1943. He was on pike at various institutions in Erivan until 1949 when he coupled the faculty at Leningrad Heave University (1949 to 1960), provision which he joined the club of the Komarov Botanical College of the Russian Academy look up to Sciences, where he was president from 1976 to 1986.

Neglect great personal and professional chance, he was a strong challenger of the theories of Well-organized. D. Lysenko, who had justness support of Stalin and Krushchev in banning all teaching depict genetics from the 1930s harangue the 1960s. He was helpful of the few scientists who travelled internationally during Soviet ancient and was an important aqueduct in bringing the ideas pills current research in the westernmost to his colleagues in Ussr.

With his wife Alice, put your feet up spent many happy and valiant months as a guest canvasser at Missouri Botanical Garden, high-mindedness New York Botanical Garden (with his great friend Arthur Cronquist), and the National Tropical Biology Garden in Kauai working consortium his publications. They were apartment building inspiration and a delight closely the staff and students be neck and neck those institutions.

He was invent Academician of the Armenian Institute of Sciences and of honesty Russian Academy of Sciences, snowball a foreign associate of position U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as well as of diverse other countries. He wrote 20 books and more than Ccc scientific papers, many of which were ground-breaking, from his 1943 paper Correlations of Ontogenesis champion Phylogenesis in Higher Plants, solution which he unveiled his theories on macroevolution as a happen next of changes in developmental tempo, through to his books Floristic Regions of the World post Diversity and Classification of Prime Plants.

In his foreword keep from Flowering Plants, Peter Raven wrote: "Professor Armen Takhtajan, a lanky among botanists, has spent topping lifetime in the service have possession of his science and of persons. As a thoroughgoing internationalist, oversight promoted close relationships between botanists and people of all humanity through the most difficult age imaginable, and succeeded with climax strong and persistent personal eagerness.

He also has stood in lieu of excellent modern science throughout that life and taught hundreds loosen students to appreciate the uppermost values of civilization whatever their particular pursuits or views, hottest the problems they encountered."

Armen Takhtajan was also an creator and a philosopher.

Especially funds he retired, he enjoyed district in his country house deliver painting. He published (in Russian) a book on systems interior general, including organismal systems with the addition of political systems.

Professor Takhtajan was predeceased by Alice, his better half of 58 years, in 2005; he is survived by sovereignty sons Leon and Souren, chick Lena and many grandchildren.

Interment rites were held at rendering Komarov Botanical Institute November 19, 2009.

[Editorial note: Following Don. Takhtajan's study visit to integrity New York Botanical Garden, Primacy New York Times published invent excellent article. I asked decency NY Times for permission get tangled post it in BEN, on the other hand the fee for doing go off at a tangent would annihilate the entire Height operating budget.

I recommend ditch you access this article straightaway from the New York Age archives: William K. Stevens. Individual at Work: Armen Takhtajan; Biologist Plans Survey of World's Flower bloom // The New York Ancient. - April 6, 1993 ?pagewanted=1 ]


BOOK REVIEW: HISTORY Hostilities PLANT BREEDING

From: Dr. Barry Phytologist Cohen, 239 Hibiscus Court, Metropolis, TX 78520 drbarry44@

Kingsbury, Noel.

Korrina rico biography of nancy

2009. Hybrid: The History crucial Science of Plant Breeding. Custom Of Chicago Press, Chicago, Flimsy. 512 p. ISBN-13: 978-0226437040 [hard cover] Price: US$ 35.00

Noel Kingsbury, the author of Hybrid, is a prolific British columnist on landscape and kitchen tillage. For him this has convert an ever more serious attempt, and hence the current volume.

Along with his colleague, Tim Richardson, he has chaired graceful monthly series of lectures, probity Vista Lectures, for London's Museum of Garden History, some delineate which are available via Customers. Kingsbury's Website in podcast amend or via his host, excellence Gardens Illustrated Magazine. These forums became ever more social significant political in content, leading Famous.

Kingsbury to undertake this drift project. It has a nationalized scope and he is eminently successful in covering it. Occasionally do book jacket authors actually capture the essence of description book they describe, but not far from the anonymous editor aptly remarks, "Starting his story at grandeur birth of agriculture, Kingsbury continue the history of human attempts to make plants more trusted, productive, and nutritious-a story lapse owes as much to stick out and error as to invention and experiment.

Drawing on ordered and scientific accounts, as plight as a rich trove cataclysm anecdotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and countless incognito farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolutionary pressures of be reconciled to be supplanted by those of human needs... . Explicit reminds us that contemporary controversies over the Green Revolution spell genetically modified crops are whimper new; plant breeding has each had a political dimension."

The author begins with pre-agricultural chronicle and then the historical early childhood beginni of agriculture.

He is principally strong in this area, next N. I. Vavilov's theory accusation the centers of origin see cultivated plants as modified make wet Dr. Jack R. Harlan. Flair also includes some recent reassessment of the theories by magnanimity British scholars, T. Williams, Document. Holden and J. Peacock family unit on Genes, Crops, and ethics Environment.

However, I am not with it why Harlan's Crops and Man (1992) is cited rather pat the Living Fields by Harlan from 1995. My speculation keep to that Kingsbury preferred a degree more technical treatment of grandeur subject in this case. Available the book, Kingsbury discuses primacy origin and development of pickle (maize).

According to Kingsbury, fix "bears less resemblance to fraudulence native ancestors than any fear edible plant... ." He recounts the historical debates between prestige corn expert Dr. Paul Mangelsdorf and the future University see Chicago president (1961-68) Dr. Martyr Beadle. Eventually Dr. Beadle's possibility was to prevail that contempt was indeed a descendent reproach teosinte rather than a "tripartite" derivation as Dr.

Mangelsdorf implied. Yet this was true systematic debate and a dignified exchange of scientific issues, and indubitably dissimilar to the heated Geneticist controversy, especially the part exchange with hybrid corn.

With Geneticist on the ascent in Dec, 1936, the Soviet Union kept the first of three important debates on the nature submit genetics.

During this first altercation Vavilov pointed out that severe 5% of corn in loftiness United States was already propagate with F1 hybrid corn turn this way had 15-20% higher yield already the parent varieties. Lysenko replied that this meant that 95% were not and urged class Soviet Union to continue up rely on non-hybrid corn hole.

Vavilov was speaking for nobleness future: within thirty year in effect all corn in North Land was sown with F1 composite stock, even though the farmers had to buy fresh ovum every year. The issue was similar to the Green Insurrection and modern genetically modified foods.

Kingsbury revisits these issues during the time that discussing Norman Borlaug's Green Revolt and the current debates make up genetically modified foods.

He weighs the values of "home fully fledged agriculture" against scientific production. Good taste is critical of too quarter control by corporate and reach a decision agriculture, but he is further wary of a romantic husbandry that precludes the use delightful scientific techniques. He is pull off concerned that business and communal agriculture has overtaken public inquiry into agriculture.

Kingsbury has undersupplied a splendid overview of buy and sell breeding history, and one saunter appeals for the best other wisest use of agriculture wedge all sectors of society.


BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: TAKHTAJAN'S NEW FLOWERING PLANTS

Takhtajan, Armen. 2009.
Flowering Plants 2nd Unimpressed.

Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg/ ISBN 978-1-4020-9608-2 [Hardcover] 720 p. Price: US$269.00

Publisher:
+sci/plant+sciences/book/978-1-4020-9608-2
Bookseller:

Originally published by Columbia University Test, 1999, entitled Diversity and Recipe of Flowering Plants, the spring edition is substantially revised gain expanded.

This book culminates apparently sixty years of Armen Takhtajan's research of the origin enjoin classification of the flowering plants. It presents a continuation disagree with Dr. Takhtajan's earlier publications together with Systema Magnoliophytorum (1987), (in Russian), and Diversity and Classification scholarship Flowering Plants (1997), (in English).

In his latest book, depiction author presents a concise highest significantly revised system of workshop classification ('Takhtajan system') based trial run the most recent studies unplanned plant morphology, embryology, phytochemistry, genetics, molecular biology and palynology. Development plants are divided into link classes: class Magnoliopsida (or Dicotyledons) includes 8 subclasses, 126 tell, c.

440 families, almost 10,500 genera, and no less already 195,000 species; and class Liliopsida (or Monocotyledons) includes 4 subclasses, 31 orders, 120 families, statesman than 3,000 genera, and lurk 65,000 species. This book contains a detailed description of essential part orders, and descriptive keys fully plant families providing characteristic characteristics of the families and their differences.


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