Zalenskii, Vladimir Vladimirovich

Born Jan. 26 (Feb. 7), 1847, in the village of Shakhvorostovka, in presentday Poltava Oblast; died Oct. 26, 1918, in Sevastopol’. Russian zoologist and embryologist; academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1897; corresponding member, 1893).

Zalenskii graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1867. He became a professor at the University of Kazan in 1871 and at Novorossiisk University (Odessa) in 1882. He was director of the Zoological Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1897 and simultaneously (from 1901) of the Sevastopol’ Biological Station. He worked in the field of comparative embryology pioneered by E. Metchnikoff and A. O. Kovalevskii. His main works deal with the embryology of certain vertebrates (Volga sterlet) and many invertebrates. He showed that the brain nerve ganglion in segmented worms and the brain in vertebrates do not develop in the same way—that is, that they are not homologous formations.