Abstract
As Famintsyn’s apprentice, Vinogradskii’s perspectives on questions of fungal nutrition agreed in large part with the views Famintsyn expressed in The Exchange of Matter. Famintsyn’s 800 page monograph, which finally appeared in 1883, was a broad compendium of knowledge drawn from botany, physiology and chemistry. In concert with its sequel, a textbook entitled Plant Physiology (1887), it represented the founding of plant physiology as an independent discipline in Russia. Although a quick comparison leads one to conclude that Vinogradskii’s report mirrored the relevant sections of The Exchange of Matter, it was not, however, his investigation’s sole source of inspiration. Famintsyn’s moody, inquisitive apprentice had also engaged the ideas of the broader European community of physiologists, microbiologists, and chemists through an exploration of a wide variety of sources. The most pertinent of these were Pasteur’s publications on fermentation (which had made a deep impression on Vinogradskii) and Nägeli’s work. It is most probable that Famintsyn, through his lectures and laboratory courses, had led Vinogradskii to study seriously Pasteur’s and Nägeli’s researches. For this reason I present their work as Vinogradskii first encountered it, filtered through Famintsyn’s interpretation. The incongruities that remain, then, between Famintsyn’s portrayal of certain questions in The Exchange of Matter and Vinogradskii’s discussion of them in his presentation represent the latter’s own contributions to the research.
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Notes
- 1.
See Strogonov, Andrei Sergeevich Famintsyn, 1835–1918, 70–71; and Kursanov et al., Andrei Sergeevich Famintsyn: Zhizn’ i nauchnaia deiatel’nost’.
- 2.
I have considered that Vinogradskii introduced Famintsyn to the issues raised in the investigation, but all the evidence suggests that the flow of influence was towards Vinogradskii.
- 3.
Famintsyn, Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh, 10.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Andrei S. Famintsyn, “Organismy na granitse zhivotnago i rastitel’nago tsarstva,” in Sbornik Izdavaemyi Studentami Imeratorskago Peterburgskago Universiteta, Vyp. 2. (S.-Peterburg: Tipografiia II-go Otd. Sob. E. I. B. Kantseliarii, 1860), 18–62.
- 8.
Famintsyn, “Organismy na granitsii zhivotnago i rastitel’nago tsarstva,” 23. Famintsyn cites Unger’s “A Plant at the Moment of Transforming into an Animal,” as the first description of a simple organism (the single-celled alga Vaucheria) transitioning from an immobile to a mobile condition. See Famintsyn, Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh, 12. On the alternation of generations, see Lynn K. Nyhart, Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800–1900 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 122.
- 9.
Famintsyn, Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh, 11.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
This could also be related to Andrei Beketov’s evolutionary views on the environment’s influence on development. See Strogonov, 25–26; Todes, Darwin Without Malthus, 45–61.
- 12.
Famintsyn, Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh, 216, 375.
- 13.
Ibid., 140.
- 14.
Ibid., 141.
- 15.
Ibid., 142–143.
- 16.
Ibid., 216.
- 17.
Ibid. By choosing the “fermenting fungi” Mycoderma vini Desm., Vinogradskii was, in part, satisfying Famintsyn’s concern that, although a large number of investigations had been carried out on fungal nutrition, this work provided only a “scanty amount of information.” It was also possible that Vinogradskii saw some practical application for studying this fermenting fungus, which also had been found to play a role in beet sugar production. Vinogradskii’s family owned a presiding interest in a Kiev beet sugar plant.
- 18.
This investigation of this synthesis of organic matter, Famintsyn noted, had been initiated with marginal success in the three groups of microscopic plants: “all of which belong to the simple representatives of the class fungi: (1) the fermenting fungi, (2) several molds (Mucor, Penicillin and Aspergillus), and (3) the Schizomycetes (bacteria).” Ibid., 215–216, 375.
- 19.
Other names included Hermiscius cerevisea, Mucor mucedo, and countless more.
- 20.
For a discussion of the wide variety of names for Mycoderma vini, see Oscar Brefeld, Botanische Untersuchungen über Schimmelpilze (Leipzig: Verlag von Arthur Felix, 1872), Heft 1, “Mucor mucedo, Chaetocladium jones’ii, Piptocephalis freseniana. Zygomyceten,” 1–64; Max Resse, Botanische Untersuchungen über die Alkoholgährungspilze (Leipzig: Verlag von Arthur Felix, 1870), esp. 81–84. Famintsyn uses Reese’s illustrations in his Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh.
- 21.
Ferdinand Cohn, “Untersuchungen über Bacterien,” Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen (Breslau: J. U. Kern’s Verlag, 1875), Erster Band, Erstes Heft, (1870), 127–222, see 203–204. On Cohn see Gerald L. Geison, Ferdinand Julius Cohn, in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. III, 336–341; and Pauline Cohn and Felix Rosen, Ferdinand Cohn: Blätter der Erinnerung, (Breslau: J. U. Kern’s Verlag, 1901). Pauline Cohn (Ferdinand Cohn’s wife) edited together a collection of Cohn’s diaries and correspondence. Both of these biographical works provide extensive bibliographies.
- 22.
Cohn, “Untersuchungen über Bacterien,” 204.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Oeuvres de Pasteur (Paris: Masson et Cie, Editeur’s, 1939), ed. Pasteur Vallery-Radot, Vol. II, “Fermentations et generations dites Spontanées,” 650.
- 25.
Ibid., 653. One reason Famintsyn may have preferred Cohn’s term, is that Pasteur supported Christian Ehrenberg’s classification, which Famintsyn had dismissed as “unstable” in his “Organisms on the Boundary” (1860). See Oeuvres, Vol. II, 175, originally published as Recherches sur la putréfaction, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, séance du 29 juin 1863, LVI, 1189–1194.
- 26.
Famintsyn, Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh, 381.
- 27.
Famintsyn believed that “[o]ne of the next problems in the investigations of fermenting fungal nutrition will be the demarcation of these processes.” Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Ibid., 228.
- 31.
Ibid., 229.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid. Famintsyn cites Nägeli, Theorie der Gahrung (1879), 174.
- 34.
Famintsyn, Obmen Veshchestvo i Prevrashchenie Ehnergii v Rasteniiakh, 229.
- 35.
Nägeli’s idea differed from Liebig’s view, in that where Liebig accepted that a simultaneous change occurs in the body producing the fermentation, Nägeli saw the plasma acting “completely mechanically, not undergoing any kind of alteration.” Ibid.
- 36.
Ibid., 230.
- 37.
Ibid., 228.
- 38.
Ibid., 217–218.
- 39.
Ibid., 218.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Ibid., 225.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
At the time Vinogradskii began his investigation there were no chemical methods available to accomplish Famintsyn’s objective of studying the chemical processes inside cells. Using the next best method, the prolonged, ‘direct’ observation of the organism’s development, Vinogradskii surveyed his Mycoderma cultures for how efficiently or effectively they exchanged matter and transformed energy—that is, grew—in varied substrates.
- 45.
Ibid., 376.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid. 377. Famintsyn was fascinated by “the peculiar simple, artificial solutions” used by investigators to provide most of what was known about fungal nutrition. The proper procedure to obtain a pure culture, in his opinion, was to grow the selected experimental fungus from a single spore in a sealed vessel, which contained a liquid substrate of some simple solution (both the vessel and substrate would have been sterilized by heating prior to adding the spore).
- 50.
See Pasteur, Études sur la Bière, 170.
- 51.
Ibid. Pasteur’s liquid, contained in 100 cubic centimeters of water: 10 g of cane sugar, 0.1 g of ammonium tartrate, 0.07 g of ashes, obtained through the calcination of 1 g of dry yeast.
- 52.
Ibid., 379; Lothar Meyer offered the most popular “simple Pasteur solution,” in which he “replaced the tartaric acid with nitric acid; the ammonia was introduced in the form of nitrates; and sugar remained the mixture’s only organic compound.” Nägeli conducted a long series of experiments testing the influence of a wide variety of these simple solutions, including Pasteur’s and Meyer’s, on fungi development. Famintsyn applauded Nägeli’s extension of Pasteur’s findings. Where Pasteur had “exactly determined the difference in fungal nutrition with and without the presence of free oxygen” using his single simple solution, Nägeli contributed “a lengthy series of interesting parallel experiments” on a much wider range of substrates. Famintsyn found it unfortunate that he could not accept Nägeli’s interesting results “with unconditional reliability” and demanded “a careful verification.” Famintsyn’s main objection was that Nägeli, “in organizing his experiments proceeded from the undemonstrated position that all changes in the prepared mixtures were caused by the germs of simple organisms.” Famintsyn applied the same reasoning to many of Nägeli’s other experiments, which, due to the lack of culture purity, could not “provide exact information on the level of suitability of mixtures for the nutrition of each of the three groups of fungi.”
- 53.
Sergei N. Vinogradskii, “O vliianii vneshnikh uslovii na razvitie Mycoderma vini,” Trudy Sankt-Peterburgskogo Obshchestva Estestvoispytatelei, XVI, 2d ser. (1883), 132–135.
- 54.
Vinogradskii, “O vliianii vneshnikh uslovii na razvitie Mycoderma vini, 132. It is possible that in discussing the constancy of cell shape here, he is associating his investigation with debates on the nature of microscopic species. There is not enough evidence to make a strong case for this period of his life.
- 55.
As we shall see below this organism was known by several names at this time—Famintsyn referred to it Saccharomyces Mycoderma, Pasteur as Mycoderma vini, and Nägeli as hefepilze. It was more commonly known as wine yeast. [See Oscar Brefeld for an overview of this confusion. Also see F. Cohn’s work.].
- 56.
Vinogradskii, “O vliianii vneshnikh uslovii na razvitie Mycoderma vin,” 132.
- 57.
Ibid.
- 58.
Gutta Percha was a relatively new and increasingly popular item in chemical apparatuses during this period. It is “a rubber like gum produced from the latex of various SE Asian trees (esp. genera Palaquium and Payena) of the sapodilla family,” see Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Ed., Simon and Schuster, 1982.
- 59.
Vinogradskii, “O vliianii vneshnikh uslovii na razvitie Mycoderma vini,” 133.
- 60.
Ibid.
- 61.
Ibid. It is unclear from the report if Vinogradskii explained Hansen’s method during his presentation.
- 62.
Ibid.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Ibid., 133–134. While this test may seem to reflect Pasteur’s classic fermentation work, remember that Famintsyn had replicated Pasteur’s work (and the related work of Boehm) on fermentation in grape cells. See above.
- 65.
The thallus, or vegetative part, of a fungus, made of a mass of threadlike tubes.
- 66.
Vinogradskii, “O vliianii vneshnikh uslovii na razvitie Mycoderma vini,” 134.
- 67.
Ibid.
- 68.
Ibid.
- 69.
Ibid.
- 70.
A container, generally of glass and with a long tube, in which substances are distilled.
- 71.
Vinogradskii, “O vliianii vneshnikh uslovii na razvitie Mycoderma vini,” 134.
- 72.
Ibid., 134–135.
- 73.
Ibid., 135.
- 74.
Ibid.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Ibid.
- 77.
Ibid.
- 78.
Vinogradskii, Itogi, 13. By “danger” Vinogradskii was imagining the dire situation his family would have faced had he died or become permanently injured from what he no doubt considered the health/life threatening conditions he had been working under.
- 79.
Ibid.
- 80.
Ibid., 13–14.
- 81.
Ibid., 14.
- 82.
Is seems unlikely that the idea for Vinogradskii to work in De Bary’s laboratory had never been suggested by Famintsyn. Perhaps, however, Vinogradskii was too embarrassed at having quit the professor’s track to ask for a letter of introduction.
- 83.
Ibid., 15.
- 84.
Ibid.
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Ackert, L. (2012). The Exchange of Matter and the Transformation of Energy. In: Sergei Vinogradskii and the Cycle of Life. Archimedes, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5198-9_2
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