Boris Evgenevich Raikov

Born Sept. 8 (20), 1880, in Moscow; died Aug. 1, 1966, in Leningrad. Soviet teacher, meth-odologist, and historian of the natural sciences. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1961). Member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR (1945).

Raikov graduated from the department of natural sciences of the faculty of physics and mathematics at the University of St. Petersburg in 1905; in 1944 he became a doctor of pedagogical sciences. He was appointed a professor in 1918. In the 1920’s and from 1945 to 1948 he was a professor in and the head of the sub-department of natural-science methodology at the A. I. Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. Between 1945 and 1966 he was a senior scientific worker at the Leningrad division of the Institute of the History of the Natural Sciences and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Raikov helped found the Soviet method of teaching biology with his works General methodology for the Natural Sciences (1947) and Means and Methods of Naturalist Education (1960). He investigated pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas in Russia and in his work Russian Biologists and Evolutionists Before Darwin (vols. 1–4, 1947–59) analyzed the evolutionary views of C. F. Wolff, K. M. Baer, K. F. Rul’e, and A. P. Bogdanov.