Lazarenko, Andrii

Lazarenko, Andrii [Лазаренко, Андрій], b 27 November 1901 in Kyiv, d 13 September 1979 in Lviv. Botanist; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1951. After graduating from the Kyiv Institute of People's Education in 1924, he worked at the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1922–41, 1943–5), chaired a department of the Lviv Division of the Institute of Botany (1945–9, 1954–6, and 1964–79) (now Institute of the Ecology of the Carpathians of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), directed the Institute of Agrobiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1951–3), and chaired a department at Lviv University (1945–58). His works deal with the classification and geographical distribution of mosses in Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asia, and the Far East. For five years (1959–64) he was barred from teaching and from continuing his research because he had openly criticized Ivan Michurin’s legacy in Soviet agrobiology.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]