Alexander Chizhevsky was a prominent scientist of the 20th century who founded heliobiology, aero-ionization, electrohematology. He was also a pioneer of cosmo-biology, an inventor, a poet and a painter.
Background
Alexander Chizhevsky was born on February 7, 1897 in the village of Ciechanowiec, at that time Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (today’s Poland) into the family a military man. His father Leonid Vasilievich Chizhevsky was a Russian military general, captain of artillery, and inventor. He invented commander's goniometer for firing from closed positions and the device for destroying wire barriers. Chizhevsky’s mother Nadezhda Alexandrovna died of tuberculosis, when the boy was several months old, and Chizhevsky was brought up by his aunt and grandmother. Alexander was a frail boy, and his relatives often took him to long trips abroad – Italy, Southern France, Greece, Egypt. In 1913, the family moved to Kaluga, where he spent his early years, and later teenage years. His father bought a residence on Ivanovskaya street.
Education
The boy received comprehensive home education, which covered natural and exact sciences, but most of all future scientist liked humanities, enjoying music, poetry and painting. Aged four, he learned by heart Russian, German and French verses which his grandmother made him read aloud and little by little he started to write verse himself. The boy dreamt of becoming a painter or writer, but didn’t forget about science as well. In 1904, Alexander learnt painting at the Paris Academy of Arts from Degas’ student Gustave Nodier. In December 1906, Alexander’s father was moved to the town of Bielsk (today’s Poland), where his son entered Bielsk Men's Gymnasium, but soon Leonid was transferred to the Zegrze Fortress (Poland), and Alexander returned to home education.
He received secondary education in Kaluga. In 1914, Alexander entered private modern school of F. Shakhmagonov and graduated from it in 1915. In 1914, Chizhevsky met Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the pioneer of the astronautic theory. Their acquaintance developed into a lifelong friendship which continued till the last days of Tsiolkovsky.
After finishing secondary education and according to his taste, Alexander Chizhevsky chose two higher educational institutions, which were located in Moscow: Institute of Commerce (perfect for mathematicians) and Moscow Archaeological Institute (with a variety of humanitarian sciences). In July 1915, Chizhevsky went to Moscow and entered Moscow Institute of Commerce (today’s Plekhanov Russian University of Economics), and in September, he became an auditor of the Moscow Archaeological Institute.
In 1917, having graduated with distinction from Moscow Archaeological Institute, the young scientist defended two master’s theses: “Russian lyric poetry of the 18th century” and “The evolution of physico-mathematical sciences in the ancient world”. He defended his Doctorate of Philosophy thesis “On the periodicity of the world-historical process” in 1918 at Moscow State University. He became Doctor of Historical Sciences at the age of 21 and Professor a year later. His Moscow State University Doctorate of Philosophy thesis was "On the periodicity of the world-historical process." He later called his view point heliotaraxy or heliotaraxia.
Career
In 1915, Chizhevsky made his first scientific report, in which he told the audience about effects of the Sun’s electric perturbations on biological objects. The speech launched a vivid discussion. At the same time, being a student of Moscow Institute of Archeology, Alexander attended literary soirees and met many eminent Russian writers and poets. In June 1916, Chizhevsky joined the army as a volunteer, was wounded and dismissed from the army in December of the same year with a St. George Cross for courage.
Chizhevsky resumed his studies as soon as he returned from the army. The scientist successfully passed all examinations and defended the dissertation on the Russian lyrics of the XVIII century in 1917. Between 1917 and 1923, Chizhevsky read lectures in his home Institute and kept studying: he attended seminars at the faculty of physics and mathematics of Moscow State University. In 1918, Chizhevsky compiled a textbook of the Russian language, since new spelling had been introduced.
Alexander Chizhevsky’s interests were also painting and poetry. In 1915 in Kaluga he published his early poems and 4 years later his second collection of poetry “Book of Poems” was born. After the revolution broke out, Chizhevsky reflected a lot on the place and role of art, in particular poetry, in society. His reflections were shaped into an aesthetic treatise “Academy of Poetry” published in Kaluga in 1918.
In the same years, Chizhevsky performed research on aero-ionization. He set up a home laboratory in his father’s house, constructed an electroeffluvial chandelier (which later became known as “chizhevsky chandelier”) and discovered beneficial effect of negative ions in the air on living organisms. His report stimulated interest in the scientific community, and Nobel Prize laureate Svante Arrhenius invited Chizhevsky to work in his team. However, the joint work with the genius remained a dream, which upset Chizhevsky very much, since he quitted from all his jobs to go abroad.
In 1919, the scientist published his second book of poems. Six years after Alexander Chizhevsky wrote the book “Physical factors of the historical process”, in which briefly explained main statements of his dissertation. That book played a sad role in his further life.
Between 1917 and 1923, Chizhevsky lectured on the History of the Development of Precise Science in the ancient world and the History of Archaeological Discovery. He was also attending lectures in the Physics and Mathematics Departments and he took part in the work of the Nature Research Society in Kaluga.
Chizhevsky’s scientific interest tended to switch to biology. His several employments between 1922 and 1926 were dealing with medicine and biology. In 1923, Alexander Chizhevsky got a job in the Practical Laboratory of Zoopsychology and took an active part in research. The scientist studied effects of aeroions on animals and human beings. Works of the Russian researcher attracted attention of international academic communities. The first foreign country that published Chizhevsky’s works was France. The paper became the first research on curing effects of aeroions on respiratory tract diseases. In 1929, Alexander Chizhevsky became the member of Toulon Academy of Sciences. The same year the scientist was invited to Columbia University (USA) to read lectures in biological physics. Employment in the Practical Laboratory of Zoopsychology left Chizhevsky enough time for working in other places and on other interesting problems of electrobiology. Between 1924 and 1930, Chizhevsky collected extended statistics on long-term dynamics of various processes, taking place in the biosphere and suggested a concept, linking them with cycles of solar activity. Chizhevsky’s scientific activities found understanding and support of the Soviet government. In 1931, the government established Central scientific laboratory of ionification, headed by Chizhevsky for 11 years. In 1937, Chizhevsky organized two research labs for studying aero- ionification, however, not much is known about that work. Many technical problems found solutions, but the World War II interrupted all studies, which were resumes only in fifties.
In 1926, Chizhevsky worked with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the world’s first experimental research in the field of space biology. In 1929, he became member of the Tulan Academy of Sciences and lectured on biophysics at Columbia University in New York City. In 1931, he set up the Central Research Laboratory for Ionisation in the USSR. His work in aero-ionification was supported by the Soviet government. In 1935, he discovered the metachromasyof bacteria – the so-called "Chizhevskii-Velkhover effect" – enabling solar emissions that were hazardous to man both on Earth and in space, to be forecast. He was head of two aero-ionisation laboratories. In 1939, he was the Honorary President of the International Congress of Bio-physics held in New York City.
Further fate of Alexander Chizhevsky was tragic, like fates of many eminent people of those times. Although the Soviet government eventually provided Chizhevsky with his own laboratory, largely because of his contribution to the understanding of air ionization, one person who remained singularly unimpressed with Chizhevsky’s theories was Josef Stalin, who in 1942 demanded that the scientist retract his ideas about the sun’s influence on human beings. Any proof that revolution was brought about by anything other than the natural progression of the working class’s struggle might prove ruinous to the Communist Party. When Chizhevsky refused, he was shipped off to a gulag in the Ural Mountains.
He spent eight years imprisoned there and, after his release in 1950 in Karaganda (Kazakhstan), another eight years being rehabilitated, after which, his already fragile health largely broken. Chizhevsky lived in that city until 1958, when he was rehabilitated, and worked in Kazakhstan and the Urals. The scientist continued his studies of aero-ionization and introduced the technique to several coalmines of Karaganda region. When Chizhevsky returned to Moscow, he brought the aero-ionic therapy to some of medical institutions of the capital and founded the Scientific Laboratory of Ionization and Air Conditioning. While living in Karaganda, Alexander Chizhevsky performed a series of experiments on hemodynamics and prepared draft papers on aero-ionification and structure of moving blood. Chizhevsky died in Moscow in 1964 after a long illness.
A year after his death in the mid-1960s, when the Soviet Academy of Sciences opened his archives, the sheer breadth and foresight of Chizhevsky’s work stood fully revealed. He became a posthumous hero, with a science center created in his name, which houses, in pride of place, the Chizhevsky “chandelier,” an early air ionizer.
Alexander Chizhevsky is the founder of heliobiology and the term cosmic weather was suggested by him. He studied biological effects of the sun and universe, including how solar activity maps to periods of war throughout history. Chizhevsky is recognized as the founder of solar-earth research, having proved that the Sun's activity has an effect on many terrestrial phenomena. Chizhevsky also was noted for his work in cosmo-biology, biological rhythms and hematology.
Chizhevsky was the first to carry out research on the electromagnetic properties of erythrocytes in circulating blood. A pioneer in biophysics of microcirculation, he suggested an explanation for the mechanisms of Rouleau and other pre-static phenomena (1932), which is broadly used in the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) test. He also discovered metachromasia in bacterial cells (1935).
At the International Congress of Biophysics in New York in 1939, Chizhevsky was called "Leonardo da Vinci of the XX Century. He was a multi-talented man. He was a painter of water colors shown in Soviet galleries and the composer of hundreds of poems. The artist's favorite theme was the landscape. His works are distinguished by professional skill and wealth of color, subtle understanding of the nature. Chizhevsky’ lyrics is also marked by a mature mastery.
Epidemiological accidents and periodic activity of the Sun
1930
The structural analysis of moving blood
1959
The Terrestrial Echo of Solar Storms
1976
Space Pulse of Life
painting
painting
painting
painting
painting
painting
Politics
Josef Stalin in 1942 demanded that the scientist retract his ideas about the sun’s influence on human beings. Any proof that revolution was brought about by anything other than the natural progression of the working class’s struggle might prove ruinous to the Communist Party. When Chizhevsky refused, he was shipped off to a gulag in the Ural Mountains.
Views
Alexander Chizhevsky advanced a theory claiming that the solar activity cycles affected all of human history. He drew insight from the striking observation that two Russian revolutions of the early XX century (in 1905-1907 and 1917) and several major European revolutions of the XIX century (in 1830, 1848, and 1871) occurred in the years of maximum solar activity.
Chizhevsky collected a huge empirical data – from the Roman and early Chinese sources up to the 1930 s – to show the close correlation between the periods of the higher activity of the Sun and mass revolutionary movements. It is, of course, the Russian revolution in 1917 that gave the decisive impulse to his research. Chizhevsky asks: why under similar social, economic and political constellations in some cases masses become mobilized and revolutionized but in other cases they remain passive and indifferent. The answer that Chizhevsky offers is this: to be able to start a revolutionary movement the human beings should be mobilized not only on the level of the spirit but also on the level of the body. The human spirit can be mobilized through an ideology but, according to Chizhevsky the degree of mobilization of the human body, like of all the organisms living on the Earth, is dependent on the cycles of solar activity.
Chizhevsky found that a significant percent of revolutions and what he classified as “the most important historical events” involving “large numbers of people” occurred in the 3-year period around sunspot maximums.
Through his further studies, Chizhevsky came to believe that correlations with the solar cycles could be found for a very diverse set of natural phenomena and human activities. In his book, he compiled a list of as many as 27 of them that supposedly fluctuated with the solar cycle, ranging from crop harvests to epidemic diseases to mortality rates. According to his studies, the periods of maximum solar activity were generally associated with negative effects such as lower harvests, intensification of diseases (including psychological ones), and higher mortality rates. However, Subsequent studies generally did not confirm the strength and scope of all the links between solar activity and various physical and social processes claimed by Chizhevsky.
Chizhevsky collected an incredible amount of astronomical and historical data to show the correlation between activity of the Sun and activity of revolutionary movements. As he shows the greatest revolutions coincided with the greatest activity of the Sun – and the historical process is characterized by a succession of active and passive periods corresponding to the 11 years cycles of solar activity (the highest degree of activity follows the 22 years cycle). But it seems to me that for our time the most interesting part of his results concerns the relationship between activity of the Sun and English parliamentary election. These results show that the influence of the Sun dictates not only the choice between revolution and status quo but also between leftwing and rightwing politics in the framework of regular parliamentary processes. Thus, Chizhevsky shows that for the period between 1830 and 1924 the summary activity of Sun during the rule of liberal governments was 155,6% higher than during the rule of conservative governments. The conservative governments never had power when the number of sunspots was over 93. The moments of change in the solar activity are almost precisely correlated to the changes of the English governments.
At the end of his text Chizhevsky suggests that the knowledge of the correlation between activity of the Sun and political activity of the masses can prepare the political classes to the seemingly unexpected changes of the public mood. Chizhevsky specifically warns that the growth of solar activity can lead not only to the adoption of progressive agenda by the masses but also to the rise of irrational and reactionary populist movements.
Quotations:
“Life is a phenomenon. Its production is due to the influence of the dynamics of the cosmos on a passive subject. It lives due to dynamics, each oscillation of organic pulsation is coordinated with the cosmic heart in a grandiose whole of nebulas, stars, the sun and the planet.”
"We are accustomed to holding a gross and narrow anti-philosophical view on life as a result of random play of only Earth-bound forces. This is, most certainly, wrong. Life as we see now is, to a far greater extent, a cosmic phenomenon, rather than only Earth-based. It was created by the influence of creative dynamics of cosmos onto inert material of Earth. It lives through the dynamics of those forces, and each and every beat of this organic pulsation is aligned with the pulse of the Cosmic Heart—this grandiose totality of nebulae, stars, the Sun, and the planets.”
“The principles of modern natural science have urged me to investigate whether or not there is a correlation between the more important phenomena of nature and events in the social-historical life of mankind. In this direction, beginning in the year 1915, I have performed a number of researches, but at present I am submitting to the public only those which are directed towards determining the connection between the periodical sun-spot activity and (1) the behavior of organized human masses and (2) the universal historical process.
The following facts are based upon statistics gathered by me while submitting to a minute scrutiny the history of all the peoples and states known to science, beginning with the V century B. C. and ending with the present day.
1. As soon as the sun-spot activity approaches its maximum, the number of important mass historical events, taken as a whole, increases, approaching its maximum during the sun-spot maximum and decreasing to its minimum during the epochs of the sun-spot minimum.
2. In each century the rise of the synchronic universal military and political activity on the whole of the Earth's territory is observed exactly 9 times. This circumstance enables us to reckon that a cycle of universal human activity embraces 11 years (in the arithmetical mean).”
3. He proposed to divide the eleven-year solar cycle into four phases:
1) 3-year period of minimum activity (around the solar minimum) characterized by passivity and “autocratic rule”;
2) 2-year period during which people “begin to organize” under new leaders and “one theme”;
3) 3-year period (around the solar maximum) of “maximum excitability,” revolutions and wars;
4) 3-year period of gradual decrease in “excitability,” until people are “apathetic.”
4. The course and development of each lengthy historical event is subject to fluctuations (periods of activity and inactivity) in direct dependence upon the periodical fluctuations occurring in the sun's activity. Formula: the state of predisposition of collective bodies towards action is a function of the sun-spot periodical activity.
5. Episodic leaps or rises in the sun's activity, given the existence in human societies of politico-economical and other exciting factors, are capable of calling forth a synchronic rising in human collective bodies. Formula: the rising of the sun-spot activity transforms the people's potential energy into kinetic energy.
My studies in the sphere of synthesizing historical material have enabled me to determine the following morphological law of the historical process:
6. The course of the universal historical process is composed of an uninterrupted row of cycles, occupying a period equaling in the arithmetical mean 11 years and synchronizing in the degree of its military-political activity with the sun-spot activity. Each cycle possesses the following historio-psychological peculiarities:
a. In the middle points of the cycle's course the mass activity of humanity all over the surface of the Earth, given the presence in human societies of economical, political or military exciting factors, reaches the maximum tension, manifesting itself in psycomotoric pandemics: revolutions, insurrections, expeditions, migrations etc., creating new formations in the existence of separate states and new historical epochs in the life of humanity. It is accompanied by an integration of the masses, a full expression of their activity and a form of government consisting of a majority.
b. In the extreme points of the cycle's course the tension of the all-human military-political activity falls to the minimum, ceding the way to creative activity and is accompanied by a general decrease of military or political enthusiasm, by peace and peaceful creative work in the sphere of state organizations, international relations, science and art, with a pronounced tendency towards absolutism in the governing powers and a disintegration of the masses.
7. In correlation with the sun-spot maximum stand:
a. The dissemination of different doctrines political, religious etc., the spreading of heresies, religious riots, pilgrimages etc.
b. The appearance of social, military and religious leaders, reformists etc.
c. The formation of political, military, religious and commercial corporations, associations, unions, leagues, sects, companies etc.
8. It is impossible to overlook the fact that pathological epidemics also coincide very frequently with the sun-spot maximum periods.
9. Thus the existence of dependence between the sun-spot activity and the behavior of humanity should be considered established.
One cycle of all-human activity is taken by me for the first measuring unit of the historical process. The science concerned with investigating the historical phenomena from the above point of view I have named historiometria.
At present I am working on a plan of organizing scientific institutes for determining the influence of cosmic and geophysical factors upon the condition of the psychics of individuals and collective bodies, and devising a working method for them.”
Membership
He was elected member of 18 Academies in USSR, USA, France and some other countries.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Prof. S Ertel wrote: “Soon I found myself looking, with due sense of duty, at unconventional claims of disrespected authors. Is there anything at Alexander Chizhevsky’s claim that variations of solar activity and dependent geomagnetic oscillations have any impact on human mental life? I there any evidence of his claim that changes of minds among masses of people are triggered by solar magnetism manifesting themselves as upheavals, revolts, civil wars, revolutions, and other forms of “power from below”? (Chizhevsky had been banished by Stalinist “power from above” to some gulag in Ural). I found weaknesses in the Russian’s archival procedure. To my surprise, however, my scrutiny of this hypothesis based on own data corroborated the gist of his results. Fortunately, representatives of mainstream science in the West where tolerance is decreed by law could not simply react to this finding by jailing the researcher.”
Interests
poetry, painting, art
Connections
Chizhevsky’s first wife was Irina Alexandrovna nee Samsonova. They had a daughter Irina. In 1931, Chizhevsky married secretary of Durov Animal Theater Tatiana Sergeevna nee Roshchina. He adopted her daughter Marina from the first marriage, but they hadn’t own children. They officially divorced in 1951. Chizhevsky’s third wife became Anna Mikhailovna nee Taranets. His last wife was Nina Vadimovna nee Engelhardt. She was arrested while trying to leave the USSR illegally. She met Chizhevsky in exile in Kazakhstan, and they got married there.
Father:
Leonid Vasilievich Chizhevsky
He invented commander's goniometer for firing from closed positions and the device for destroying wire barriers
Mother:
Nadezhda Alexandrovna Chizhevskaya
First wife:
Irina Alexandrovna nee Samsonova
Second wife:
Tatiana Sergeevna nee Roshchina
Third wife:
Anna Mikhailovna nee Taranets
fourth wife:
Nina Vadimovna nee Engelhardt
Daughter:
Irina Alexandrovna Kuskova
friend, colleague:
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
In 1914, Chizhevsky met Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the pioneer of the astronautic theory. Their acquaintance developed into a lifelong friendship which continued till the last days of Tsiolkovsky.
Chizhevsky was elected Honorary President of the 1st World Congress in Biophysics and Cosmic Biology (1939) and nominated by scientists of different countries for the Nobel Prize.
Chizhevsky was elected Honorary President of the 1st World Congress in Biophysics and Cosmic Biology (1939) and nominated by scientists of different countries for the Nobel Prize.
