Thursday, May 12, 2005

Father Of Noosphere Born This Day

From Today In Science History:

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky
May 12, 1863 - Jan. 6, 1945.

Russian geochemist and mineralogist who was a founder of the specialist sciences of geochemistry and biogeochemistry. He was the first to popularize the concept of the noosphere - the biosphere controlled by the mind of man. Within the last 200 years, humanity has been a powerful geologic force, moving more mass upon the earth than the biosphere. Two of the laws detailed by Vernadsky are that the number and kinds of chemical elements and compounds entering the cycling organization of living matter increase with time, and that as we move toward the present the pace of cycling increases.

Photo from HERE