Armen Leonovich Takhtadzhian

Takhtadzhian, Armen Leonovich

 

Born May 28 (June 10), 1910, in the city of Shusha, in what is now Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. Soviet botanist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1972; corresponding member, 1966) and Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1971; corresponding member, 1945). Member of the CPSU since 1946.

In 1932, Takhtadzhian graduated from the All-Union Institute of Subtropical Crops in Tbilisi. From 1938 to 1948 he was head of a subdepartment at the University of Yerevan, and from 1944 to 1948 he was also director of the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR. From 1949 to 1961 he was a professor at Leningrad University, while at the same time, beginning in 1954, serving as head of a department of the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Takhtadzhian’s principal works deal with the systematics, evolutionary morphology, and phylogeny of higher plants, as well as with the origin of angiosperms and with phytogeography and paleobotany. Takhtadzhian has worked out a system of higher plants and a detailed system of angiosperms. He has also proposed a new system of the organic world. The founder of a school of plant morphologists and taxonomists, Takhtadzhian has worked on the publication of The Flora of Armenia (vols. 1–6, 1954–73) and Fossil Angiosperms of the USSR (vol. 1, 1974), both as editor and contributor.

Takhtadzhian is president of the All-Union Botanical Society (since 1973). Since 1975 he has been president of the division of botany of the International Union of Biological Sciences and the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1971), the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters (1971), the Leopoldina German Academy of Naturalists (1972), the Linnean Society of London (1968), and other scientific societies. He was awarded the V. L. Komarov Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1969 for his monograph The System and Phylogeny of Angiosperms (1966). He has been awarded two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and various medals.

WORKS

Morfologicheskaia evoliutsiia pokrytosemennykh. Moscow, 1948.
Vysshie rasteniia, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1956.
Die Evolution der angiospermen. Jena, 1959.
Osnovy evoliutsionnoi morfologii pokrytosemennykh. Moscow-Leningrad, 1964.
Proiskhozhdenie i rasselenie tsvetkovykh rastenii. Leningrad, 1970.
“Rasteniia v sisteme organizmov.” In Zhizn’ rastenii, vol. 1. Moscow, 1974.

REFERENCE

Lavrenko, E. M., and A. A. Iatsenko-Khmelevskii. “Armen Leonovich Takhtadzhian (k 60-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia).” Botanicheskii zhurnal, 1970, vol. 55, no. 12. (Contains references.)

S. G. ZHILIN