Mikhail Khristoforovich Chailakhian

Born Mar. 8 (21), 1902, in the city of Nakhichevan’-na-Donu, now within the city limits of Rostov-on-Don. Soviet plant physiologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968); academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1971). Honored Scientist of the Armenian SSR (1967).

Chailakhian graduated from the University of Yerevan in 1926. In 1935 he became head of the laboratory of growth and development at the K. A. Timiriazev Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1941 to 1948 he was chairman of the department of plant physiology and anatomy of the University of Yerevan (professor from 1943). Between 1941 and 1946 he also was chairman of the department of plant physiology and microbiology at the Armenian Agricultural Institute.

Chailakhian primarily studied plant growth and development (particularly ontogenesis) and the photoperiodic and thermal regulation of flowering. The founder of the hormone theory of plant development, he worked out methods of using plant hormones to regulate growth and flowering. These hormones included gibberellins—growth stimulators—used to increase crop yields and growth retardants used to prevent cereal grains from falling over onto the ground.

Chailakhian is a foreign member of the German Leopoldine Academy of Natural Scientists (1969). He has been awarded two orders of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.