Lavrenko, Yevhen

Lavrenko, Yevhen [Лавренко, Євген], b 23 February 1900 in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv gubernia, d 18 July 1987 in Leningrad. Geobotanist and phytogeographer; full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1968. He graduated from the Kharkiv Institute of People's Education (1922) and worked at the botanical gardens in Kharkiv (1921–8) and the Kharkiv Institute for the Protection of Nature (1926–9). He taught at the Kharkiv Agricultural Institute in 1929–34 and then moved from Kharkiv to work in the Leningrad Botanical Institute. Lavrenko’s scientific research was devoted mainly to steppe vegetation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a field in which he introduced new classifications, as well as to the regionalization and mapping of vegetation. He wrote numerous works on the geobotany of Ukraine, particularly its steppes and marshlands. Lavrenko also worked on the history of flora and vegetation and introduced a concept of the phytogeosphere as a part of the biosphere.

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