Abstract
THE death is announced of Clement Arkadievitch Timiriazeff, emeritus professor of botany in the University of Moscow. Timiriazeff was the only Russian botanist who was at all a familiar figure in England. In earlier days he came to England and saw Charles Darwin, while his last visit was made as a delegate to the Darwin celebration in Cambridge in 1909. His earliest publication appeared in 1863—a Russian book on “Darwin and his Theory,” which ran through five editions. Here he made his mark as an attractive expounder of science for the general reader, and he followed this work with books on “The General Problems of Modern Science,” “Agriculture and Plant Physiology” and “The Life of the Plant.” The last was in great demand, there being seven Russian editions between 1878 and 1908, while in 1912 it was translated into English, and is widely read to the present day. Its characteristic note is an exposition of plant structure and function based on the chemical and physical processes at work in the living plant. Without comparison of the early editions we cannot tell at what date this book took the form in which it appeared in English, but it looks as if Timiriazeff was one of the earliest writers to take up this essentially modern outlook. His attitude was no doubt an expression of his early training under chemists and physicists. Born in 1843, he studied under Bunsen, Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, and Berthelot before working with Boussingault.
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Prof. C. A. Timiriazeff, For.Mem.R.S. Nature 105, 430 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105430a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105430a0