Grossgeim, Aleksandr Alfonsovich

Born Feb. 23 (Mar. 6), 1888, in the village of Likhovka, present-day Dnepropetrovsk Oblast; died Dec. 4, 1948, in Leningrad. Soviet botanist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member, 1939) and academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR (1945).

Grossgeim graduated from Moscow University in 1912. He worked at the Tbilisi Botanical Garden from 1913 to 1926, the Tbilisi Polytechnical Institute from 1917 to 1930, and the University of Azerbaijan from 1927 to 1946. He organized and directed the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR from 1936 to 1947. He became director of the Caucasian Flora Section of the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and chairman of the corresponding department at Leningrad State University in 1947. Grossgeim’s chief works are devoted to the flora, vegetation, and plant resources of the Caucasus. He was author of the compendium Flora of the Caucasus in four volumes (1928–34; 2nd ed., seven volumes of which appeared from 1939 to 1967, not completed), Analysis of the Flora of the Caucasus (1936), Plant Resources of the Caucasus (1946; State Prize of the USSR, 1948), Vegetational Cover of the Caucasus (1948), and Handbook for the Plants of the Caucasus (1949). In 1945, Grossgeim proposed an original phylo-genetic system for angiosperms. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals.