Levitskii, Grigorii Andreevich

Born Nov. 7 (19), 1878, in the village of Belki, in present-day Zhitomir Oblast, Ukrainian SSR; died May 20, 1942. Soviet botanist and cytologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1932).

In 1902, Levitskii graduated from the University of Kiev, where he had been a student of S. G. Navashin. He was an instructor at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute (1904–08, 1911–22), a professor at the Kiev Institute of the National Economy (1920–25), and the head of the laboratory at the Kiev Institute of Selection (1922–25). Between 1925 and 1941, Levitskii headed the cytology laboratory at the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing in Leningrad. He was a professor at the Pushkin Agricultural Institute (1930–32, 1938–41) and at Leningrad State University (1933–41).

Levitskii’s principal works are on the structure and development of chondriosomes in plant cells, the morphology of chromosomes and their evolutionary changes, the karyosystematics of plants, and the use of the cytological method in selection. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.