Varnek, Nikolai
Varnek, Nikolai Aleksandrovich
Born Mar. 30 (Apr. 11), 1821; died 1876 in Moscow. Russian biologist.
Varnek graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1844. In the period 1846 to 1849 he taught botany and zoology in the Institute of the Corps of Mining Engineers (today, the Leningrad Mining Institute). From 1849 he was an adjunct and from 1852 to 1860 a professor at Moscow University in the subdepartment of comparative anatomy and physiology. Varnek first described the processes that take place in the fertilized egg of a mollusk, the division of polar bodies, and the merging of the two nuclei and their subsequent division.