Botanical scientific schools of Academician A.L.Takhtajan

摘要

A number of botanical schools in Russia and Armenia owe their existence to the efforts of Armen Leonovich Takhtajan, one of the greatest botanists of the 20~(th) century, during his 70 years of active involvement in scientific research, administration and teaching. His enthusiasm for natural science was aroused in childhood by his father, who had received an agronomic education in western Europe, and he became seriously interested in botany as a schoolboy, thanks to the inspired teaching of his schoolmaster, A.K.Makashvili. Even while still at school he was technically proficient in the collection and naming of plants. Takhtajan received his higher education in Yerevan and Tiflis (1932) under the guidance of N.A.Troitsky and D.I.Sosnowsky, well known systematic botanists. He was soon invited to give courses in botany and was only 28 when in 1938 he became Head of the Department of Plant Morphology and Systematics at Yerevan University. His knowledge of the flora of the Transcaucasus, especially Armenia, and a very early interest in phylogeny, especially evolutionary morphology and anatomy, lead Takhtajan to the conclusion that the research problems involved could be satisfactorily tackled only on a team basis. Thus, in spite of much difficulty he managed to organize a Laboratory of Plant Anatomy at the Yerevan Institute of Botany, inviting A.A.Yatsenko-Khmelevsky from Tbilisi to be its Head. Study of the flora of Armenia became possible only because of a steady increase in the number of workers involved and their gradual conversion to the . In this way there gradually but nonetheless comparatively quickly arose in Yerevan groups of researchers which can best be regarded as schools of systematics / floristic taxonomists, palynologists and wood anatomists. They were marked by a concern with phylogenetic aspects, invariably considered by Takhtajan in the assessment of all systematic and anatomical data, and this became the main feature distinguishing them from other such schools. The Leningrad / St.Petersburg period of Takhtajan's research activity began in 1949 and has continued to the present day. He held the professorship of Botany at Leningrad University from 1949 till 1961 and from 1954 till 1988 was Head of the Laboratory of palaeobotany and Department of Higher Plants at the Komarov Botanical Institute. The basic work on the , begun in Yerevan, was crowned in the Leningrad / St.Petersburg period by the publication, to date, of 9 of its volumes. Work continued on palynology of recent plants, with the involvement of St.Petersburg as well as Armenian students / palynologists. Research on the systematics of higher nonflowering and flowering plants has continued even more intensively than before and throughout the Leningrad / St.Petersburg period, with the addition of the work of Takhtajan's students in stomatography, palynology, carpology and wood anatomy. The work of the Laboratory of Palaeobotany founded in 1949 by A.N.Kryshtofovich, was changed considerably. A Takhtajan school of palaeobotany was created in St.Petersburg, marked by a gradual intensification of studies in the systematics of fossil plants. Notable also during the last 35 years of Takhtajan's activity are his efforts to found a Laboratory of Biosystematics, which have yielded positive results in that Takhtajan's students (and their students) have become proficient in serology, karyosystematics of palynology. As a result, there has been an increase in the numbers of botanists / taxonomists routinely employing these methods (in Yerevan, St.Petersburg, Kiev and Riga).