Armen Takhtajan | |
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Armen Takhtajan
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Native name | Armen Takhtajan |
Born |
Shusha, Russian Empire |
June 10, 1910
Died | November 13, 2009 Saint Petersburg, Russia |
(aged 99)
Citizenship | USSR |
Fields | Botany |
Institutions | |
Alma mater | Yerevan State University |
Known for | "Takhtajan system" of flowering plant classification |
Author abbrev. (botany) | Takht. |
Spouse | Alice |
Signature |
Armen Leonovich Takhtajan or Takhtajian (Armenian: Արմեն Լևոնի Թախտաջյան; Russian: Армен Леонович Тахтаджян; surname also transliterated Takhtadjan, Takhtadzhi︠a︡n or Takhtadzhian, pronounced TAHK-tuh-jahn) (June 10, 1910 – November 13, 2009), was a Soviet-Armenian botanist, one of the most important figures in 20th century plant evolution and systematics and biogeography. His other interests included morphology of flowering plants, paleobotany, and the flora of the Caucasus. He was born in Shusha. He was one of the most influential taxonomists of the latter twentieth century.
Takhtajan was born in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia on 10 June 1910, to a family of Armenian intellectuals. His grandfather Meliksan Takhtadzhyan Petrovich had been born in Trabzon, Ottoman Empire but was educated in Italy, on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, an Armenian enclave and spoke many languages and worked as a journalist. He died in Paris in 1930. His father, Leon Meliksanovich Takhtadzhyan (1884 - 1950), was born in Batumi, Georgia was educated as an agronomist at Leipzig University. Graduating in 1906, he worked on farms in France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and made a special study of sheep farming. He became proficient in German, French, English, Russian, Georgian and Azerbaijani. Arriving in Shusha in 1908, then a centre of sheep farming in the Caucasus, looking for work, Leon was forced to teach German at the local Realschule attached to the Armenian seminary, due to lack of opportunities in his chosen field. There he met and married Gazarbekyan Sergeevna Gerseliya (1887 - 1974), Armen Takhtajan's mother, a native of Susha, in 1909.