Vasilii Georgievich Aleksandrov

Born May 24 (June 5), 1887, in St. Petersburg; died Jan. 16, 1964, in Leningrad. Soviet botanist. Student of V. I. Palladin, worked with N. A. Maksimov, 1915–19. Founder of the anatomical school. Professor at the University of Tiflis from 1920 and at the University of Tomsk from 1927 to 1929.

Between 1929 and 1942, while working at the All-Union Horticulture Institute, Aleksandrov conducted research on the anatomy of farm plants (bast fiber, beans, essential-oil-bearing plants, potatoes, cereals, rubber-bearing plants, oil-bearing plants, and others). From 1942 on, while working at the ecology department of the botany institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he organized research on the physiological anatomy of plants. In particular he studied the conducting system of plants, the processes of delignification and lignification, green plastids, and the structure and development of pistils (especially cereal caryopses).