Vladimir Vernadsky
(1863-1945)
Vladimir I. Vernadsky was a mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. He was one of the founders and the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Vernadsky is most noted for his 1926 book
The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess' 1875 term biosphere and the
Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis by hypothesizing that life is a geological force that shapes the earth.
Vernadsky was a near contemporary of
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose concept of an
Omega Point and
Cosmogenesis bear many similarities to Vernadsky's ideas on the evolution of
life and
mind in his "noösphere."
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