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Academician Berg Lev Semenovich archive. Soviet geographer Lev Semenovich Berg. Literature about L.S. Berge

BERG LEV SEMENOVICH

Berg, Lev Semenovich, zoologist and geographer. Born 1876; Graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University, receiving a gold medal for the essay: “Fragmentation and formation of parablast in pike” (“News of the Society of Natural History Lovers”, 1899). In 1899, together with Elpatievsky and Ignatyev, he explored the salt lakes of the Omsk district. He was in charge of fisheries in the Syr Darya and the Aral Sea, then on the Volga (in Kazan); is in the service of the zoological museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. In 1899 - 1907 he explored the Aral Sea ("Scientific results of the Aral Expedition"), in 1903 - Lake Balkhash; then visited Lake Issyk-Kul. In 1909, he defended a dissertation at Moscow University for a master's degree in geography under the title: "The Aral Sea. Experience in a physical-geographical monograph" (St. Petersburg, 1908), for which he was awarded a doctorate in geography.

Brief biographical encyclopedia. 2012

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what BERG LEV SEMENOVICH is in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

  • BERG LEV SEMENOVICH
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  • BERG LEV SEMENOVICH in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    Lev Semenovich, Soviet physical geographer and biologist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946; corresponding member 1928), honored worker of science...
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    The legendary king of Laconia from the Agid family, who ruled in the first half. VI century BC Son of Eurycrates II. Leo continued the war...
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    mammal of the cat family. Body length up to 2.4 m, tail up to 1.1 m; weighs up to 280 kg. Few in number; preserved only in...
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    Lev Sem. (1876-1950), physical geographer and biologist, academician. USSR Academy of Sciences (1946). He developed the doctrine of landscapes and developed the ideas of V.V. Dokuchaeva about...
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    Aksel Iv. (1893-1979), scientist in the field of radio engineering and radio electronics, academician. USSR Academy of Sciences (1946), administrative engineer. (1955), Hero of Social. Labor (1963). Tr. ...
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    Aksel Ivanovich (1893-1979), Russian scientist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946), engineer-admiral (1955), Hero of Socialist Labor (1963). Proceedings on radio engineering. Active…
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  • SUKHORUKOV, LEONID SEMYONOVICH in the Wiki Quote Book:
    Data: 2009-04-23 Time: 13:56:17: ""This article must be combined with the article by Leonid Semenovich Sukhorukov. Please complete this page with the missing...
  • MIKHAIL SEMYONOVICH SOBAKEVICH in the Wiki Quote Book:
    Data: 2009-01-10 Time: 14:01:04 Mikhail Semenovich Sobakevich is the hero of the poem “Dead Souls”. * ? And the face of a robber! ? Sobakevich said. ...
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    Data: 2008-11-01 Time: 11:28:21 Medvedenko Semyon Semenovich, character in the comedy “The Seagull.” - * Why? "" (Thinking.)"" I don’t understand... Are you healthy, father...
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    - a legislative act of December 10, 1719, which determined the policy of the Russian government in the mining industry; was practical guide for the Berg College...

Lev Semenovich Berg

Geographer, ichthyologist, climatologist.

“...It was an unusually backward county town“,” Berg recalled, “there were no pavements, and by autumn all the streets were covered with a layer of liquid mud, on which it was possible to walk only in special extra-deep galoshes, which I have never seen since then; obviously they were made specifically for the needs of the residents of Bendery. There was no street lighting in the city, and on dark autumn nights one had to wander through the streets with a hand-held lantern. From the average educational institutions There was one pro-gymnasium, for some reason for women. Of course, no newspapers were published in the city.”

Only the gold medal with which Berg graduated from the Chisinau gymnasium allowed him to enter Moscow University.

Lectures by outstanding scientists D. N. Anuchin, A. P. Bogdanov, V. I. Vernadsky, M. A. Menzbier, K. A. Timiryazev helped Berg early determine his scientific interests. The anthropologist and ethnographer D. N. Anuchin and the geologist A. P. Pavlov had a particular influence on him.

In 1898, Berg graduated from the university.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a job in any scientific or educational institution in Moscow. Only the recommendation of Academician Anuchin helped Berg get a position as a fisheries supervisor in the Aral Sea. Without wasting time, he went to the provincial town of Akmolinsk.

The Aral Sea was real back then. Water from the Amu Darya had not yet been diverted through ditches into the desert, and the skeletons of the ships of the former fishing flotilla did not stick out among the dry sands. Berg studied the huge reservoir for several years. He was able to take a new approach to explaining the nature of the Aral Sea and painted a fairly convincing picture of the development of the sea, closely connected with the history of the Turan Lowland and the dry river bed of the Uzba, through which part of the Amu-Darya waters once flowed into the Caspian Sea. In the work “The Question of Climate Change in historical era“Berg refuted the ideas that were widespread at that time about the drying out of Central Asia and the progressive change in its climate towards increasing desertity.

In 1909, for his work on the Aral Sea, which Berg presented as his master's thesis, he was immediately awarded a doctorate. Reviews were provided by D. N. Anuchin, V. I. Vernadsky, A. P. Pavlov, M. A. Menzbier, G. A. Kozhevnikov, V. V. Bartold and E. E. Leist, undoubtedly the best specialists that time.

From 1904 to 1914, Berg headed the department of fish and reptiles of the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. During these years, he completed and published a number of excellent studies on the fish of Turkestan and the Amur region.

In 1916, Berg was elected professor at Petrograd University.

The main works of this period are devoted to the origin of the fauna of Lake Baikal, the fish of Russia, the origin of loess, climate change in the historical era and the division of the Asian territory of Russia into landscape and morphological areas.

Revolutionary events interrupted Berg's field research for a long time.

The scientist’s first major works published after the revolution were “Nomogenesis, or evolution based on patterns” and “Theories of evolution” (1922). Berg wrote both of these books while sitting in his coat in an unheated room, heating the freezing ink on the fire of a smokehouse. In these works devoted to the theory of evolution, Berg distinguished three directions:

criticism of the main evolutionary teachings and, first of all, Darwinian,

developing your own hypothesis about the causes of evolution, based on the recognition of a certain initial expediency and “autonomous orthogenesis” as the main law of evolution, acting centripetally and independently of the external environment, and

generalization of the laws of macroevolution, such as irreversibility, increasing the level of organization, long-term continuation of evolution in the same direction, convergence, etc.

Berg's evolutionary work was caused by the crisis that Darwinism experienced in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Berg never shared Charles Darwin's views on the causes of evolution. He believed that variability in nature is always adaptive, and organisms do not react gradually to changes in external conditions, but, on the contrary, sharply, abruptly, en masse. Thus, Berg attached decisive importance to variability rather than to natural selection. Of course, “Nomogenesis” (“a set of patterns”), developed by Berg, caused a lot of objections. Berg's assertion that in biological evolution there is no place for chance, and everything happens naturally, sounded too provocative. But historically, Berg's works turned out to be extremely important, if only because both acutely posed the problem of the direction of evolution and the role of internal factors in phylogenesis, polyphyly, convergence and parallelism. The view of the majority of Berg's opponents was well expressed by Professor N. N. Plavilshchikov. “The book Nomogenesis,” he wrote, “is one of the latest attempts to overthrow the theory of selection. Of course, nothing good came out of this attempt and could not come out, despite the monstrous erudition of the author and the well-known wit of his conclusions: two and two are always four. Deny the theory of selection... Could there be another explanation for the expediency in the structure of organisms?..."

This, however, can be answered in the words of Herbert Spencer: humanity goes straight only after exhausting all possible crooked paths.

As a natural scientist, Berg always sought to give his arguments the form of strictly empirical constructions. “To find out the mechanism of formation of adaptations is the task of the theory of evolution,” he wrote. As for living matter, Berg generally believed that it was conceivable only as an organism. “The dreams of those chemists who thought that by performing protein synthesis in a flask, they would obtain a “living substance” were naive. There is no living matter at all, there are living organisms.”

“Darwin’s theory sets out to explain the mechanical origin of expediency in organisms,” he wrote in his work “The Theory of Evolution.” – We consider the ability to react appropriately as the main property of the organism. It is not the evolutionary doctrine that has to figure out the origin of expediencies, but the discipline that undertakes to talk about the origin of living things. This question, in our opinion, is metaphysical. Life, will, soul, absolute truth - all these are transcendental things, the knowledge of the essence of which science is not able to give. We don’t know where and how life came from, but it is carried out on the basis of laws, like everything that happens in nature. Transmutation, whether it occurs in the sphere of dead or living nature, occurs according to the laws of mechanics, physics and chemistry. In the world of dead matter, the principle of randomness, that is, large numbers, prevails. The most probable things happen here. But we do not know what principle underlies an organism in which the parts are subordinate to the whole. Likewise, we do not know why organisms generally increase in their structure, i.e., progress. How this process occurs, we begin to understand, but Why“Science can answer this now just as little as in 1790, when Kant expressed his famous prophecy.”

Under pressure from the criticism that his views on evolution were subjected to, Berg returned to questions of geography and ichthyology. One after another, his books “The Population of Bessarabia” (1923), “The Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering’s Kamchatka Expeditions” (1924), “Fundamentals of Climatology” (1927), “Essays on the History of Russian Geographical Science” (1929), “Landscape-Geographical Zones” appeared one after another. USSR" (1931), "Nature of the USSR" (1937), "The System of Pisciformes and Fishes" (1940), "Climate and Life" (1947), "Essays on Physical Geography" (1949), "Russian Discoveries in Antarctica and Modern interest in her" (1949).

The breadth of Berg's views can be judged by the content of his books.

Essays on physical geography, for example, include sections: “On the supposed separation of continents”, “On the supposed connection between the great glaciations and mountain building”, “On the origin of the Ural bauxites”, “On the origin of iron ores of the Krivoy Rog type”, “The level of the Caspian Sea” over historical time”, “Baikal, its nature and the origin of its organic world”. And in the book “Essays on the History of Russian Geographical Discoveries,” he touches not only on the history of these discoveries themselves, but also on such a seemingly unusual topic as “Atlantis and the Aegean,” in which he comes to a conclusion unexpected for his contemporaries. “I would place Atlantis not in the area between Asia Minor and Egypt,” he writes, “but in the Aegean Sea - south to Crete. As is known, in our time it is recognized that the subsidence that gave rise to the Aegean Sea occurred, geologically speaking, quite recently, in Quaternary times, perhaps already within human memory.”

In 1925, Berg again visited his beloved Aral Sea. These studies of his were associated with work at the Institute of Experimental Agronomy, where Berg headed the department of applied ichthyology from 1922 to 1934.

In 1926, Berg visited Japan as part of a delegation from the USSR Academy of Sciences. He went there specifically through Manchuria and Korea in order to get as complete an idea as possible about the nature of these countries. And the following year Berg represented Soviet science in Rome at the Limnological Congress.

Incredible hard work was Berg's main trait. During his life he managed to complete over nine hundred scientific works. He worked constantly, which is probably why he managed so much. In everything he followed a certain system. He was a convinced vegetarian, never smoked, and only walked to work. Tremendous erudition allowed Berg to feel at home in any field of science.

“...Science leads to morality,” he wrote in the book “Science, its meaning, content and classification,” “for it, demanding evidence everywhere, teaches impartiality and justice. There is nothing more alien to science than blind admiration for authority. Science honors its spiritual leaders, but does not create idols out of them. Each of these provisions can and, indeed, has been challenged. The motto of science is tolerance and humanity, for science is alien to fanaticism, admiration for authority, and therefore despotism. The consciousness of the scientist that in his hands is the only objective truth accessible to man, that he has knowledge supported by evidence, that this knowledge, until it is scientifically refuted, is mandatory for everyone, all this makes him value this knowledge extremely highly, and, in the words of the poet , “...for the power, for the livery, don’t bend your conscience, your thoughts, your neck.” The high moral significance of science lies in the example of selflessness set by a dedicated scientist. It is not in vain that the crowd, which strives for wealth, fame and power and the material benefits associated with all this, looks at the scientist as an eccentric or a maniac.”

Whatever topic Berg worked on, he always tried to expand it broadly and give clear conclusions.

In this regard, the book “Fishes of the Amur Basin” (1909) is indicative.

It would seem that this is a narrow zoological summary, giving a description of the fish found in the Amur River system. But three small chapters of this work - “The General Character of the Ichthyological Fauna of the Amur Basin”, “Fishes of the Amur from the Point of View of Zoological Geography” and “The Origin of the Ichthyological Fauna of the Amur” - are of lasting interest to geographers and naturalists. Berg approaches natural phenomena in their complex relationships, paints a vivid picture of the origin of modern landscapes of the Amur basin, and draws on not only ichthyological material. Actually, identifying causal connections phenomena is the main task and method of his research.

Berg's work on paleoclimatology, paleogeography, biogeography, and especially climate change during the historical period is very significant. They are all written in simple language, some are popular in the best sense of the term. For example, the book “Climate and Life” can be read and understood by anyone who is interested in issues of climate and life. Berg's books about Russian travelers and explorers went through many editions. Working in the archives, he sometimes found absolutely remarkable facts, which allowed him to boldly assert back in 1929 that “... the Russians, within the boundaries of the USSR alone, mapped and studied an area equal to one-sixth of the land surface, that vast spaces were explored in the border areas with Russia regions of Asia, that all the shores of Europe and Asia from the Varanger Fiord to Korea, as well as the shores of a large part of Alaska, have been mapped by Russian sailors. Let us also add that many islands have been discovered and described by our sailors in the Pacific Ocean.”

Geographical works brought Berg wide fame.

The mountains of Norway, the deserts of Turkestan, the Far East, the European part of Russia - everything was reflected in his system of views on the world. He did a tremendous amount of work in the field of regional studies; his profound works on natural zones became the property of not only professional geographers, but also botanists and zoologists. He was one of the first to take up issues of scientific geographical zoning, having done remarkable work on the zoning of Siberia and Turkestan, Asian Russia and the Caucasus. He owns the major summary “Fishes of fresh waters of the USSR and neighboring countries.” Of the 528 species of fish found in the rivers and lakes of our country, 70 species were first discovered and described by Berg. He created a scheme for dividing the whole world, separately Soviet Union and Europe into a number of zoogeographical regions based on the distribution of certain fish species. In search of ways for fish to develop, Berg began studying fossils. And here he achieved excellent results, writing the outstanding work “The System of Pisciformes and Fishes, Living and Fossils” (1940, 1955, Berlin, 1958).

The university textbooks created by Berg are written in excellent, lively language. He always opposed abstruse terminology, through which one had to wade through as if through a thorny thicket. He even wrote a special article in which he sharply opposed such complicated terminology as, for example, “differential centrifugation of the dermal pulp of infected rabbits” or “anthropodynamic impulses.” The latter, by the way, just means human influence. Berg never tired of recalling the words of Lomonosov: “What we love in the Latin, French or German style is sometimes worthy of laughter in Russian.”

In 1904, Berg was elected a full member of the Russian Geographical Society, and thirty-six years later he became its president. Academician since 1946. In 1951 he was posthumously awarded the State Prize.

Death found the scientist with a book in his hands.

This text is an introductory fragment. From the book 100 Great Adventurers author Muromov Igor

From the book 100 great composers author Samin Dmitry

Alban Berg (1885–1935) One of the most prominent representatives of expressionism in music, Berg expressed in his work the thoughts, feelings and images characteristic of expressionist artists: dissatisfaction with social life, feelings of powerlessness and loneliness. Hero of it

From the book Popular History of Music author Gorbacheva Ekaterina Gennadievna

Alban Berg Austrian composer, teacher, representative of the new Viennese school Alban Berg was born in 1885. He was a student and follower of A. Schoenberg, with whom he studied from 1904 to 1910. Berg began his path in musical art with the piano sonata opus 1 (1908) and

From the book Art Museums of Belgium author Sedova Tatyana Alekseevna

Museum Mayer van den Berg The charm of this private collection lies not only in the fact that it bears the imprint of the taste and character of its collector, a passionate lover of art, but also in the fact that it is housed in an old patrician house from the 15th century with dark oak

From the book Lexicon of Nonclassics. Artistic and aesthetic culture of the 20th century. author Team of authors

TSB

Berg Axel Ivanovich Berg Axel Ivanovich [b. 29.10 (10.11).1893, Orenburg], Soviet radio engineer, engineer-admiral, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946; corresponding member 1943), Hero of Socialist Labor (1963). Member of the CPSU since 1944. In 1914 he graduated from the Naval Corps. As a submarine navigator

From the book Big Soviet Encyclopedia(BE) of the author TSB

Berg Alban Berg (Berg) Alban (9.2.1885, Vienna, - 24.12.1935, ibid.), Austrian composer. One of the most prominent representatives of expressionism in music. He studied composition under the guidance of A. Schoenberg, who had a significant influence on the formation of B.’s creative principles.

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BE) by the author TSB

Berg Fedor Fedorovich Berg Fedor Fedorovich, Russian surveyor. He studied at Dorpat (now Tartu) University. In the 20s compiled a military-statistical description of Turkey. Led (1823, 1825) expeditions

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BE) by the author TSB

Berg Eizhen Augustovich Berg Eizhen Augustovich (1892, Riga, - 20.9.1918), active participant October revolution 1917 and Civil War. Member Communist Party since 1917. Born into a fisherman's family. During World War I he was a driver on the battleship Sevastopol. After the February

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BE) by the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BE) by the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BE) by the author TSB

From the book The Most Famous Scientists of Russia author Prashkevich Gennady Martovich

Lev Semenovich Berg Geographer, ichthyologist, climatologist. Born on March 14, 1876 in the city of Bendery (Bessarabia) in the family of a notary. “... It was an unusually backward county town,” Berg recalled, “there were no pavements, and by autumn all the streets were covered with a layer of liquid mud,

From the book Big Dictionary of Quotations and catchphrases author Dushenko Konstantin Vasilievich

BERG, Nikolai Vasilyevich (1823–1884), poet-translator, journalist, historian 213 In Holy Rus', roosters are crowing, Soon there will be a day in Holy Rus'. Authorship is presumed. The couplet is given in the 2nd edition (1892) of V. G. Korolenko’s essay “On an Eclipse.” In M. Gorky's version: “On the Holy

From the book Berlin. Guide by Bergmann Jurgen

PRENZLAUER BERG C?fe Anita Wronski, Knaackstr. 26-28. The pub opens early. Senefelderplatz metro station on line U2. Kommandantur Knaackstra?e / corner Rykestra?e. Hippie Italian restaurant. Senefelderplatz metro station on line U2. Restauration 1900, Husemannstr. 1. Fried pork legs and brisket, as well as vegetarian dishes,

From the book Field Marshals in the History of Russia author Rubtsov Yuri Viktorovich

Lev Semenovich (Simonovich) Berg(March 2 (15), 1876 - December 24, 1950) - Russian and Soviet zoologist and geographer.

Corresponding member (1928) and full member (1946) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, president of the Geographical Society of the USSR (1940-1950), laureate of the Stalin Prize (1951 - posthumously). Author of fundamental works on ichthyology, geography, and theory of evolution.

Family

Born in Bendery into a Jewish family. His father, Simon Grigorievich Berg (originally from Odessa), was a notary; mother, Klara Lvovna Bernstein-Kogan, is a housewife. He had younger sisters Maria (April 18, 1878) and Sophia (December 23, 1879). The family lived in a house on Moskovskaya Street.

The first wife of L. S. Berg (in 1911-1913) was Paulina Adolfovna Katlovker (March 27, 1881-1943), the younger sister of the famous publisher B. A. Katlovker. Children - geographer Simon Lvovich Berg (1912, St. Petersburg - November 17, 1970) and geneticist, writer, Doctor of Biological Sciences Raisa Lvovna Berg (March 27, 1913 - March 1, 2006). In 1922, L. S. Berg remarried Maria Mikhailovna Ivanova, a teacher at the Petrograd Pedagogical Institute.

He died on December 24, 1950 in Leningrad. He was buried on the Literatorskie bridge of the Volkovsky cemetery. The tombstone (sculptor V. Ya. Bogolyubov, architect M. A. Shepilevsky) was created in 1954.

Education and scientific career

1885-1894 - studied at the second Chisinau gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. In 1894 he was baptized into Lutheranism to obtain the right to higher education within the Russian Empire.

1894-1898 - student of the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University. (His thesis “Fragmentation and formation of parablast in pike” was awarded a gold medal)

1899-1902 - supervisor of fisheries in the Aral Sea and Syr Darya.

1903 - studied for 10 months at oceanographic courses in Bergen (Norway).

1903-1904 - supervisor of fisheries in the middle reaches of the Volga. Lived in Kazan.

November 1904 - November 1913 - head of the fish department of the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1909 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Geography for his dissertation “The Aral Sea”.

1913-1914 - acting professor of ichthyology and hydrology at the Moscow Agricultural Institute.

January 1917-1950 - Professor of the Department of Physical Geography of Petrograd and then Leningrad University. Since 1928 - Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

1918-1925 - Professor of Geography at the Geographical Institute in Petrograd (Leningrad).

1922-1934 - Head of the Department of Applied Ichthyology at the Institute of Experimental Agronomy.

1934-1950 - head of the laboratory of fossil fish at the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. In 1934 he became a Doctor of Biological Sciences. Since 1946 - full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

1940-1950 - President of the Geographical Society of the USSR.

1948-1950 - Chairman of the Ichthyological Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Contribution to science

The scientific heritage of Lev Semenovich Berg is very significant.

As a geographer, he, having collected extensive materials about the nature of different regions, made generalizations on climatic zonation globe, a description of landscape zones of the USSR and neighboring countries, created the textbook “Nature of the USSR”. Berg, the creator of modern physical geography, is the founder of landscape science, and the landscape division he proposed, although supplemented, has survived to this day.

Berg is the author of the soil theory of loess formation. His works made a significant contribution to hydrology, lake science, geomorphology, glaciology, desert science, the study of surface sedimentary rocks, issues of geology, soil science, ethnography, and paleoclimatology.

Geographer, ichthyologist, climatologist.

“...It was an unusually backward county town,” Berg recalled, “there were no pavements, and by autumn all the streets were covered with a layer of liquid mud, on which you could only walk in special extra-deep galoshes, which I have never seen since then; obviously they were made specifically for the needs of the residents of Bendery. There was no street lighting in the city, and on dark autumn nights one had to wander through the streets with a hand-held lantern. Among the secondary educational institutions there was one pro-gymnasium, for some reason for women. Of course, no newspapers were published in the city.”

Only the gold medal with which Berg graduated from the Chisinau gymnasium allowed him to enter Moscow University.

Lectures by outstanding scientists D. N. Anuchin, A. P. Bogdanov, V. I. Vernadsky, M. A. Menzbier, K. A. Timiryazev helped Berg early determine his scientific interests. The anthropologist and ethnographer D. N. Anuchin and the geologist A. P. Pavlov had a particular influence on him.

In 1898, Berg graduated from the university.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a job in any scientific or educational institution in Moscow. Only the recommendation of Academician Anuchin helped Berg get a position as a fisheries supervisor in the Aral Sea. Without wasting time, he went to the provincial town of Akmolinsk.

The Aral Sea was real back then. Water from the Amu Darya had not yet been diverted through ditches into the desert, and the skeletons of the ships of the former fishing flotilla did not stick out among the dry sands. Berg studied the huge reservoir for several years. He was able to take a new approach to explaining the nature of the Aral Sea and painted a fairly convincing picture of the development of the sea, closely connected with the history of the Turan Lowland and the dry river bed of the Uzba, through which part of the Amu-Darya waters once flowed into the Caspian Sea. In his work “The Question of Climate Change in Historical Era,” Berg refuted the then widespread ideas about the drying out of Central Asia and the progressive change in its climate towards increasing desertity.

In 1909, for his work on the Aral Sea, which Berg presented as his master's thesis, he was immediately awarded a doctorate. Reviews were provided by D. N. Anuchin, V. I. Vernadsky, A. P. Pavlov, M. A. Menzbier, G. A. Kozhevnikov, V. V. Bartold and E. E. Leist, undoubtedly the best specialists of that time.

From 1904 to 1914, Berg headed the department of fish and reptiles of the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. During these years, he completed and published a number of excellent studies on the fish of Turkestan and the Amur region.

In 1916, Berg was elected professor at Petrograd University.

The main works of this period are devoted to the origin of the fauna of Lake Baikal, the fish of Russia, the origin of loess, climate change in the historical era and the division of the Asian territory of Russia into landscape and morphological areas.

Revolutionary events interrupted Berg's field research for a long time.

The scientist’s first major works published after the revolution were “Nomogenesis, or evolution based on patterns” and “Theories of evolution” (1922). Berg wrote both of these books while sitting in his coat in an unheated room, heating the freezing ink on the fire of a smokehouse. In these works devoted to the theory of evolution, Berg distinguished three directions:

criticism of the main evolutionary teachings and, first of all, Darwinian,

developing your own hypothesis about the causes of evolution, based on the recognition of a certain initial expediency and “autonomous orthogenesis” as the main law of evolution, acting centripetally and independently of the external environment, and

generalization of the laws of macroevolution, such as irreversibility, increasing the level of organization, long-term continuation of evolution in the same direction, convergence, etc.

Berg's evolutionary work was caused by the crisis that Darwinism experienced in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Berg never shared Charles Darwin's views on the causes of evolution. He believed that variability in nature is always adaptive, and organisms do not react gradually to changes in external conditions, but, on the contrary, sharply, abruptly, en masse. Thus, Berg attached decisive importance to variability rather than to natural selection. Of course, “Nomogenesis” (“a set of patterns”), developed by Berg, caused a lot of objections. Berg's assertion that in biological evolution there is no place for chance, and everything happens naturally, sounded too provocative. But historically, Berg's works turned out to be extremely important, if only because both acutely posed the problem of the direction of evolution and the role of internal factors in phylogenesis, polyphyly, convergence and parallelism. The view of the majority of Berg's opponents was well expressed by Professor N. N. Plavilshchikov. “The book Nomogenesis,” he wrote, “is one of the latest attempts to overthrow the theory of selection. Of course, nothing good came out of this attempt and could not come out, despite the monstrous erudition of the author and the well-known wit of his conclusions: two and two are always four. Deny the theory of selection... Could there be another explanation for the expediency in the structure of organisms?..."

This, however, can be answered in the words of Herbert Spencer: humanity goes straight only after exhausting all possible crooked paths.

As a natural scientist, Berg always sought to give his arguments the form of strictly empirical constructions. “To find out the mechanism of formation of adaptations is the task of the theory of evolution,” he wrote. As for living matter, Berg generally believed that it was conceivable only as an organism. “The dreams of those chemists who thought that by performing protein synthesis in a flask, they would obtain a “living substance” were naive. There is no living matter at all, there are living organisms.”

“Darwin’s theory sets out to explain the mechanical origin of expediency in organisms,” he wrote in his work “The Theory of Evolution.” – We consider the ability to react appropriately as the main property of the organism. It is not the evolutionary doctrine that has to figure out the origin of expediencies, but the discipline that undertakes to talk about the origin of living things. This question, in our opinion, is metaphysical. Life, will, soul, absolute truth - all these are transcendental things, the knowledge of the essence of which science is not able to give. We don’t know where and how life came from, but it is carried out on the basis of laws, like everything that happens in nature. Transmutation, whether it occurs in the sphere of dead or living nature, occurs according to the laws of mechanics, physics and chemistry. In the world of dead matter, the principle of randomness, that is, large numbers, prevails. The most probable things happen here. But we do not know what principle underlies an organism in which the parts are subordinate to the whole. Likewise, we do not know why organisms generally increase in their structure, i.e., progress. How this process occurs, we begin to understand, but Why“Science can answer this now just as little as in 1790, when Kant expressed his famous prophecy.”

Under pressure from the criticism that his views on evolution were subjected to, Berg returned to questions of geography and ichthyology. One after another, his books “The Population of Bessarabia” (1923), “The Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering’s Kamchatka Expeditions” (1924), “Fundamentals of Climatology” (1927), “Essays on the History of Russian Geographical Science” (1929), “Landscape-Geographical Zones” appeared one after another. USSR" (1931), "Nature of the USSR" (1937), "The System of Pisciformes and Fishes" (1940), "Climate and Life" (1947), "Essays on Physical Geography" (1949), "Russian Discoveries in Antarctica and Modern interest in her" (1949).

The breadth of Berg's views can be judged by the content of his books.

Essays on physical geography, for example, include sections: “On the supposed separation of continents”, “On the supposed connection between the great glaciations and mountain building”, “On the origin of the Ural bauxites”, “On the origin of iron ores of the Krivoy Rog type”, “The level of the Caspian Sea” over historical time”, “Baikal, its nature and the origin of its organic world”. And in the book “Essays on the History of Russian Geographical Discoveries,” he touches not only on the history of these discoveries themselves, but also on such a seemingly unusual topic as “Atlantis and the Aegean,” in which he comes to a conclusion unexpected for his contemporaries. “I would place Atlantis not in the area between Asia Minor and Egypt,” he writes, “but in the Aegean Sea - south to Crete. As is known, in our time it is recognized that the subsidence that gave rise to the Aegean Sea occurred, geologically speaking, quite recently, in Quaternary times, perhaps already within human memory.”

In 1925, Berg again visited his beloved Aral Sea. These studies of his were associated with work at the Institute of Experimental Agronomy, where Berg headed the department of applied ichthyology from 1922 to 1934.

In 1926, Berg visited Japan as part of a delegation from the USSR Academy of Sciences. He went there specifically through Manchuria and Korea in order to get as complete an idea as possible about the nature of these countries. And the following year Berg represented Soviet science in Rome at the Limnological Congress.

Incredible hard work was Berg's main trait. During his life he managed to complete over nine hundred scientific works. He worked constantly, which is probably why he managed so much. In everything he followed a certain system. He was a convinced vegetarian, never smoked, and only walked to work. Tremendous erudition allowed Berg to feel at home in any field of science.

“...Science leads to morality,” he wrote in the book “Science, its meaning, content and classification,” “for it, demanding evidence everywhere, teaches impartiality and justice. There is nothing more alien to science than blind admiration for authority. Science honors its spiritual leaders, but does not create idols out of them. Each of these provisions can and, indeed, has been challenged. The motto of science is tolerance and humanity, for science is alien to fanaticism, admiration for authority, and therefore despotism. The consciousness of the scientist that in his hands is the only objective truth accessible to man, that he has knowledge supported by evidence, that this knowledge, until it is scientifically refuted, is mandatory for everyone, all this makes him value this knowledge extremely highly, and, in the words of the poet , “...for the power, for the livery, don’t bend your conscience, your thoughts, your neck.” The high moral significance of science lies in the example of selflessness set by a dedicated scientist. It is not in vain that the crowd, which strives for wealth, fame and power and the material benefits associated with all this, looks at the scientist as an eccentric or a maniac.”

Whatever topic Berg worked on, he always tried to expand it broadly and give clear conclusions.

In this regard, the book “Fishes of the Amur Basin” (1909) is indicative.

It would seem that this is a narrow zoological summary, giving a description of the fish found in the Amur River system. But three small chapters of this work - “The General Character of the Ichthyological Fauna of the Amur Basin”, “Fishes of the Amur from the Point of View of Zoological Geography” and “The Origin of the Ichthyological Fauna of the Amur” - are of lasting interest to geographers and naturalists. Berg approaches natural phenomena in their complex relationships, paints a vivid picture of the origin of modern landscapes of the Amur basin, and draws on not only ichthyological material. Actually, identifying the causal relationships of phenomena is the main task and method of its research.

Berg's work on paleoclimatology, paleogeography, biogeography, and especially climate change during the historical period is very significant. All of them are written in simple language, some are popular in the best sense of the term. For example, the book “Climate and Life” can be read and understood by anyone who is interested in issues of climate and life. Berg's books about Russian travelers and explorers went through many editions. Working in the archives, he sometimes found absolutely remarkable facts, which allowed him to boldly assert back in 1929 that “... the Russians, within the boundaries of the USSR alone, mapped and studied an area equal to one-sixth of the land surface, that vast spaces were explored in the border areas with Russia regions of Asia, that all the shores of Europe and Asia from the Varanger Fiord to Korea, as well as the shores of a large part of Alaska, have been mapped by Russian sailors. Let us also add that many islands have been discovered and described by our sailors in the Pacific Ocean.”

Geographical works brought Berg wide fame.

The mountains of Norway, the deserts of Turkestan, the Far East, the European part of Russia - everything was reflected in his system of views on the world. He did a tremendous amount of work in the field of regional studies; his profound works on natural zones became the property of not only professional geographers, but also botanists and zoologists. He was one of the first to take up issues of scientific geographical zoning, having done remarkable work on the zoning of Siberia and Turkestan, Asian Russia and the Caucasus. He owns the major summary “Fishes of fresh waters of the USSR and neighboring countries.” Of the 528 species of fish found in the rivers and lakes of our country, 70 species were first discovered and described by Berg. He created a scheme for dividing the entire world, separately the Soviet Union and Europe, into a number of zoogeographical regions based on the distribution of certain species of fish. In search of ways for fish to develop, Berg began studying fossils. And here he achieved excellent results, writing the outstanding work “The System of Pisciformes and Fishes, Living and Fossils” (1940, 1955, Berlin, 1958).

The university textbooks created by Berg are written in excellent, lively language. He always opposed abstruse terminology, through which one had to wade through as if through a thorny thicket. He even wrote a special article in which he sharply opposed such complicated terminology as, for example, “differential centrifugation of the dermal pulp of infected rabbits” or “anthropodynamic impulses.” The latter, by the way, just means human influence. Berg never tired of recalling the words of Lomonosov: “What we love in the Latin, French or German style is sometimes worthy of laughter in Russian.”

In 1904, Berg was elected a full member of the Russian Geographical Society, and thirty-six years later he became its president. Academician since 1946. In 1951 he was posthumously awarded the State Prize.

Death found the scientist with a book in his hands.

G. Prashkevich

BERG Lev Semenovich(1876-1950), physical geographer and biologist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946). He developed the doctrine of landscapes and developed the ideas of V.V. Dokuchaev about natural areas. He was the first to carry out zonal physical-geographical zoning of the USSR. Major works on ichthyology (anatomy, systematics and distribution of fish), climatology, lake science, as well as the history of geography. In 1922 he put forward the evolutionary concept of nomogenesis. President of the Geographical Society of the USSR (1940-50). USSR State Prize (1951).

BERG Lev Semenovich(Simonovich), Russian encyclopedist, zoologist, geographer, evolutionist, historian of science.

Born into a Jewish family, his father was a notary. While studying at the Kishinev gymnasium (1885-94), he was interested in natural history - collecting herbariums, dissecting fish, reading scientific literature. In 1894 he was baptized and entered Moscow University. Already as a student he became known for his experiments in fish breeding. Graduate work on the embryology of pike was Berg's 6th published work. After graduating from the university (1898, gold medal) he worked in the Ministry Agriculture inspector of fisheries on the Aral Sea and Volga, explored steppe lakes, rivers, deserts.

In 1902-1903 Berg studied hydrology in Bergen (Norway), in 1904-13 he worked at the Zoological Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, in 1913 he moved to Moscow, where he received a position as a professor at the Moscow Agricultural Institute. In 1916 Berg was invited to the department of physical geography at St. Petersburg University, where he worked until the end of his life.

Berg's first major scientific works were "Fishes of Turkestan" (1905) and his master's thesis "The Aral Sea" (1908), for which Berg immediately received a doctorate in geography. In 1909-16, Berg published 5 monographs on Russian fish, but geography became the main subject of his scientific interests. He developed a theory of the origin of loess and proposed the first classification of natural zones in the Asian part of Russia. By this time, the scientific style and methods of work of Berg had developed, striking him with his extraordinary productivity (he owned over 800 works). He was distinguished by iron self-discipline, a tenacious memory, the ability to work without drafts and in any conditions, clarity and clarity of presentation (the text began with the definition of concepts) and conclusions, and excellent literary language.

Berg stood aloof from politics, but keenly experienced the horrors of war and revolution, interpreting them as a brief triumph of the principle of struggle over the principle of cooperation. Having no conditions for field work during this period, Berg expanded his teaching activities (in 1916-18 - in Moscow and Petrograd in parallel) and wrote (“warming up freezing ink on the fire of a smokehouse”) 3 works on the theory of evolution (1922). They provide an analysis of basic concepts (evolution, progress, expediency, chance, the emergence of something new, simplicity of theory, direction), reject the role of the struggle for existence as a factor in evolution (both in nature and in society), and sharply limit the role of natural selection (it only protects the norm) and an original theory of evolution was put forward - nomogenesis, i.e. evolution based on patterns.

The theory had a number of weaknesses, which colleagues (A. A. Lyubishchev, D. N. Sobolev, Yu. A. Filipchenko) immediately noted, but basically the criticism took on an ideological character, especially after the publication of the English edition of Nomogenesis (1926). N.I., who defended Berg from persecution, wrote to him (1927): “We will not let you leave your post. The ship must be led, no matter what monsters get in the way.” Berg did not write more about the mechanisms of evolution. In 1928 he was elected corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in 1946 - academician) as a geographer.

In geography, Berg is known as the creator of Russian lake science and landscape theory (“geography is the science of landscapes”). In climatology, Berg gave a classification of climates in relation to landscapes, explained desertification by human activity, and glaciation by “factors of a cosmic order.” Berg denied continental drift; following V.I. Vernadsky, he pushed back the origin of life to the very beginning of geological history.

In zoogeography, Berg proposed his own interpretations of the distribution of fish and other aquatic animals, for example, he showed the local origin of the Baikal fauna, and, on the contrary, explained the composition of the Caspian fauna by post-glacial migration along the Volga. In ichthyology, Berg’s main works: “The System of Pisciformes and Fishes, Living and Fossils” (1940) and the classic three-volume work “Fresh Water Fishes of the USSR and Adjacent Countries” (1949, State Prize 1951), which have retained their scientific significance to this day, as well as numerous work on fish breeding and fishing.

Berg's interest in history and ethnography, which arose in his youth ("Uralians on the Syr Darya", 1900), has not been lost over the years. In this area, his works are devoted to the discoveries of Russians in Asia, Antarctica, and Alaska ("Essays on the history of Russian geographical discoveries", 1949), ancient maps, the life of small peoples (Gagauz, Lazy, etc.), biographies of scientists. Thanks to Berg, many forgotten names and facts of Russian priority were restored. As an ethnographer, Berg used his knowledge of languages ​​and zoology in his scientific work (for example, “Names of fish and ethnic relationships of the Slavs,” 1948).