Dmitrii Sabinin

Born Nov. 17 (29), 1889, in St. Petersburg; died Apr. 22, 1951, in Golubaia Bukhta, near Gelendzhik, Krasnodar Krai. Soviet botanist; founder of the school of plant physiologists.

In 1913, Sabinin was graduated from the University of St. Petersburg. Beginning in 1918 he taught at the University of Perm’, where he was made a professor in 1924. He headed laboratories at the Research Institute of Cotton-growing in Tashkent (from 1929), the All-Union Institute of Fertilizers, Agro-chemistry, and Agropedology (from 1932), and the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1938–41). Sabinin was a professor and a subdepartment head at Moscow State University from 1932 to 1948. He was a staff member of the Black Sea station of the Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1949 to 1951.

Sabinin’s main works dealt with the importance of the root system to a plant’s water and mineral supply. He demonstrated the roots’ participation in metabolic processes and the effect of rotation of elements in the mineral supply on plant growth and development. He made a number of recomendations on the application of fertilizers. In 1945, Sabinin received the K. A. Timi-riazev Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR for his monograph The Mineral Supply of Plants.