Pospelov, Vladimir Petrovich

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1872, in the city of Bogoroditsk, in present day Tula Oblast; died Feb. 1, 1949, in Kiev. Soviet entomologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1939).

Pospelov graduated from Moscow University in 1896 and worked at the Moscow Agricultural Institute. From 1904 to 1913 he was a privatdocent at the University of Kiev. He was a professor at Voronezh Agricultural Institute (1913–20), Leningrad Agricultural Institute (1930–40), and the universities of Saratov (1927–30) and Kiev (1944–45). From 1929 to 1940, Pospelov headed the laboratory at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Plant Protection in Leningrad. In 1946 he became the director of the Institute of Entomology and Phytopathology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

Pospelov’s principal works were on general and experimental entomology, especially on the protection of plants from pests. He was among those responsible for the organization in Russia of institutions for the protection of agricultural plants and for the creation in the USSR in 1931 of a plant-quarantine service. Pospelov organized work on biological methods of controlling destructive insects. He discovered the phenomenon of the imaginai diapause.

Pospelov was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and a medal.