Vasilii Feofilovich Kuprevich

Born Jan. 12 (24), 1897, in the village of Kal’niki, in present-day Smolevichi Raion, Minsk Oblast; died Mar. 17, 1969, in Moscow; buried in Minsk. Soviet botanist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953); academician and president of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (from 1952); Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Became a member of the CPSU in 1945. Participant in the storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd in October 1917.

Between 1934 and 1938, Kuprevich worked at the Biological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR. In 1938 he became a senior researcher at the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; he was the director of the institute from 1949 to 1952. Kuprevich was the editor in chief of the Botanicheskii zhurnal (Botanical Journal) between 1959 and 1966 and of the journal Mikologiia i fitopatologiia (Mycology and Phytopathology) from 1967. His principal works were in mycology (the classification of rust fungi, the evolution of parasitism, the problem of species, the disease agents of agricultural plants) and the physiology of diseased plants. Kuprevich laid the basis for soil enzymology. In 1952 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia. A deputy to the fourth through seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; Kuprevich was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.