Tikhon Alexandrovich RABOTNOV

(6.VIII.1904 - 16.IX.2000)
Tikhon A. Rabotnov has been professor and head of the Department of Geobotany at Moscow State University until 1981. He has inspired several generations of geobotanists and is the creator of an own "school" in plant ecology. He has had an excellent memory, a vast knowledge of the literature and a sharp "ecological intuition". He has been active at the department until his 95 and very much enjoying the rapidly growing contacts between staff and students of the department and European sister departments, particularly in Switzerland and Sweden.

Tikhon Alexandrovich Rabotnov was born in Yaroslavl' on the 6th of August, 1904. He graduated from the Agronomy Department of the University of Yaroslavl' in 1924. For more than 40 years he worked at the State Institute for Meadow Research. During this time he investigated flooded meadows and bogs in Yakutia and central Russia, where he developed strategies for grassland management and collected important data on the autecology and biology of meadow plant species. This work culminated in the book "Forage plants of mown meadow pastures". For this work he obtained a doctor's degree honoris causa in 1936. His next major work, "The life cycle of perennial plants in meadow communities", published in 1950, served as a thesis for obtaining the title of professor. With this work a new, population approach in vegetation analysis was initiated. The innovating character of these population studies by Rabotnov and his pupils was later recognized in western Europe. James White, editor of the Volume on the population structure of vegetation in the series Handbook of Vegetation Science, dedicated this volume to Rabotnov: he wrote about the earlier work "... I know of no other paper on vegetation analysis at that time which reveals such a catholicity of quoatation ...". Rabotnov wrote several papers in international journals - see References - and several chapters in the above-mentioned Handbook by Rabotnov and some of his associates. Key concepts in Rabotnov's work are polydominance, coenopopulation and consortium. Tikhon Rabotnov is not only an outstanding researcher but also an appreciated teacher. His lectures on meadow science began in 1948 at Moscow State University. Later he developed a basic course in phytocoenology which was published as a textbook, which experienced several new editions, was translated into Polish and German.

We will remember Tikhon Alexandrovich Rabotnov as one of the noted Russian plant ecologist at the end of the 20th century.

Some important publications:

The life cycle of perennial herbaceous plants in meadow communities. Trudy BIN AN SSSR. Ser. Geobot. 6: 7-197. 1950 (in Russian).

Peculurities of the structure of polydominant meadow communities. Vegetatio 13: 109-116. 1966.

On coenopoulations of perennial herbaceous plants in natural coenoses. Vegetatio 19: 87-95. 1969.

Consortia, the importance of their study for phyto-coenology. Folia Geobot. Phytotax. 7: 1-8. 1972.

Phytocoenology. 2nd ed. Izd. Moskva Univ., Moskva. 1983 (in Russian).

Meadow science. 2nd ed. Izd. Moskva Univ., Moskva. 1984 (in Russian).

Dynamics of plant coenotic populations. In: White. J. (ed.) The population structure of vegetation, pp. 121-178. Junk, Dordrecht. 1985.

Phytocoenology. 3nd ed. Izd. Moskva Univ., Moskva. 1992 (in Russian).

The history of phytocoenology. Izd. "Argus", Moskva. 1995 (in Russian).

Experimental phytocoenology. Izd. Moskva Univ. Moskva. 1998 (in Russian).

Section's curator: Balandin Sergey Alexandrovich Phone/fax: 7 (095) 939-2777 e-mail: balandin@herba.msu.ru

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