Palaeos:		Biographies
Science		V

Biographies : V

V.

Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich: (1863–1945) Ukrainian interdisciplinary scientist; the father of Russian ecology. He ehlped establish the fields of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. His 1926 book The Biosphere developed Eduard Suess' earlier 1885 concept of the biosphere into the idea of life as a geological force, similar to James Lovelock's Gaia theory. Note that this is very different to the watered down biosphere of popular thought, a mere envelope clinging to the surface of the planet. He also developed the idea of the noosphere, which he interpreted as the third stage in the earth's development, mind as a geological force; here we see obvious parallels with transhumanism. Vernadsky influenced Teilhard de Chardin and no doubt vice-versa, when they met in Paris when he Vernadsky was lecturing at the Sorbonne in Paris, although Vernadsky's theory of Earth evolution was purely materialistic, in contrast to Teilhard's Panentheism. (MAK, Wikipedia)

Vermeij, Geerat J. Evolutionary biologist and paleontologist who studies marine molluscs both as fossils and as living organisms. Developed the escalation hypothesis in the 1980s.

von Baer, Karl Ernst : (1792-1876) Baltic German naturalist of Russian Empire, a biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, a founding father of embryology, explorer of European Russia and Scandinavia, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a co-founder of the Russian Geographical Society and the first President of the Russian Entomological Society. He formulated what would later be called Baer's laws of embryology:

1. General characteristics of the group to which an embryo belongs develop before special characteristics.
2. General structural relations are likewise formed before the most specific appear.
3. The form of any given embryo does not converge upon other definite forms but, on the contrary, separates itself from them.
4. Fundamentally, the embryo of a higher animal form never resembles the adult of another animal form, such as one less evolved, but only its embryo.

(Wikipedia) Baer's laws refuted and replaced Haeckel's Recapitulation theory

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