Fomin, Oleksander

Fomin, Oleksander or Aleksandr [Фомін, Олександер], b 14 May 1869 in Yermolovka, Saratov gubernia, Russia, d 16 October 1935 in Kyiv. Prominent botanist, full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) from 1921. After graduating from Moscow University in 1893 he worked at Tartu University and from 1901 in Tbilisi, where he directed a botanical garden. From 1914 to 1927 he was a professor at Kyiv University. He became the director of the botanical cabinet and herbarium of the VUAN in 1921 and the director of the chair of botany at the Kyiv Botanical Garden in 1922 (now National Botanical Garden). In 1931 he became the director of the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1924 he founded the journal Visnyk Kyïvs'koho botanichnoho sadu. Fomin’s publications deal with plant morphology, systematics, and the flora of Caucasia, Siberia, the Far East, and Ukraine. He was the first to map out the botanical regions of Ukraine and to investigate systematically the sporogenous plants of Ukraine. He studied the sphagnum mosses and ferns of the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions. He participated in the publication of the monumental Flora URSR (Flora of the Ukrainian SSR), writing the first volume himself.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]