Sanjeet Kumar
Regional Plant Resource Centre
Bhubaneswar
Armen Leonovich Takhtajan was an
Armenian botanist who made significant contribution to the studies of plant
evolution, systematic and biogeography. He was the man of phylogenetic
relationships of flowering plants and on of the greatest authorities in the
world on the evolution of plants. He was born in Shusha, Southern Caucasus in
10 June 1910 as son of an Armenian intellectual family. He graduated from the
Institute of Subtropical Cultivation in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1932 and received
his PhD in 1938 from Leningrad State University, Gerogia. He received D.Sc. in
1943 from Yerevan State University, Armenia. In1938, he has joint the Yerevan State
University. In 1944-48 he did excellent work as the Director of the Botanical
Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Armenia became Professor at Leningrad
State University. He joint Komarov Botanical Institute as Director in 1976.
He
worked hard at the Komarov Botanical Institute in Leningrad, where he developed
the classification scheme for flowering plants, which emphasized phylogenetic
relationships. In 1950 he published the Phylogenetic system of higher plants.
Flowering plants: origin and dispersal followed 1954 in Russian, and later was
published in English (1969), in German (1973), and in Danish (1976).
His
system did not become known to botanists in the West until after 1950, and in
the late 1950s he began a correspondence and collaboration with prominent
American botanist Arthur Cronquist, whose plant classification scheme was
heavily influenced by his collaboration with Takhatajan and other botanists at
Komarov. The “Takhatajan system” of flowering plant classification treats
flowering plants as a division, Magnoliophyta, with two classes, Magnoliopsida
(dicots) and Liliopsida (monocots). These two classes are subdivided into
sublasses, and then superorders, order and families. The Takhtajan system is
similar to the Cronquist system, but with somewhat greater complexity at the
higher levels. He favors smaller orders and families, to allow character and
evolutionary relationship to be more easily grasped. However, Takhtajan uses
the Superorder as the basic unit of the Subclass and this pattern of
organization is also used in the Thorne System
of flowering plant classification. He published “Systema magnoliophytorum in
1987, which counts 533 families and published “Evolutionary Trends in Flowering
Plants in 1991 and “Diversity and Classification of flowering plants in 1997
containing 592 families.
Worldwide he
is recognised as a pioneer in plant systematic, but not to all specialists he
is also familiar as a palaeobotanist. It was an event, during a journey to
Petersburg, he met to famous palaeobotanists I.V. Palibin and he turned into
research in paleobotany too.
He founded
the Department of Evolutionary Morphology and Palaeobotany at the Botanical
Institute of Armenian Academy of Sciences in Yerevan. This was the beginning of
systematic palaeobotanical research in Armenia. He published more than 300 botanical
and palaeobotanical papers and 20 books. Armen Takhtajan described numerous new fossil
plants species and several new species have been named on honor of him.
“Takht.” is used to indicate the author in citing a botanical name. Though,
Prof. Takhtajan reached the age of 99
and died in Saint Petersburg, Russia and his long dream to write a book on the
“System of fossil flowering plants” remained unfulfilled.
CHRONOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY......................
Armen L. Takhtajan
(1910-2009)
1910: June
10, born in Shusha, Russia
1932: Graduate from the Soviet Institute
of Subtropical Crops, Georgia
1938: PhD
from Leningrad State University, Georgia
1943: D.Sc.
from Yerevan State University, Armenia
1944: Director,
Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Armenia
1948: Professor,
Leningrad State University, Georgia
1950: Published
the Phylogenetic system of higher plants.
1976: Director,
Komarov Botanical Institute,
2009: Died,
November 13 (Aged 99), in Saint Petersburg, Russia
