PYOTR PETROVICH LAZAREV

(On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death)

S. V. Kravkov*)

Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev was born in Moscow on April 14, 1878, into the family of a land-surveying engineer. After finishing gymnasium he entered the medical faculty of Moscow University, from which he graduated with distinction in 1901 with the title of physician. In 1902 P. P. Lazarev passed the examinations for the degree of Doctor of Medicine and received the position of assistant at the ear clinic of the medical faculty of Moscow University. Alongside physiology, Pyotr Petrovich took a deep interest in physics, and in 1903, by special permission of the Ministry of Public Education, he passed as an external student the examination for the entire course of the physics and mathematics faculty. This rare combination of completed medical and physico-mathematical education contributed extraordinarily to the success of all his subsequent scientific activity.

While serving as assistant at the ear clinic, P. P. Lazarev carried out his first two experimental works. Both concerned the study of the activity of the sense organs. The first dealt with clarifying the role of overtones in our perception of sound. In accordance with Helmholtz’s resonance theory, and using König’s original instruments in the Moscow ear clinic, P. P. Lazarev showed that the phases of overtones play no role in the perception of sound. By this fact the resonance theory of hearing received a new and weighty confirmation. P. P. Lazarev’s second work was devoted to elucidating the connection that exists between our auditory and visual sensations. Here he convincingly demonstrated the phenomenon of an increase in the perceived loudness of a sound caused by simultaneous light stimuli acting upon the eye. This work,

*) The present article was written by the late pupil of P. P. Lazarev, the major specialist in the physiology of the sense organs S. V. Kravkov. The article was intended for the second edition of the work People of Russian Science and has not been published anywhere else. It is printed with the kind permission of the editorial board of the essays People of Russian Science.

having posed, by a rigorously scientific method, the question of the interaction of the sense organs, became the basis for a whole series of investigations that later developed in Soviet science on the problem of the interaction of the sense organs. In these same years (1903–1905) P. P. Lazarev began attending the weekly colloquia in the laboratory of the famous physicist P. N. Lebedev and conducting experimental research there, at first as a freelance volunteer. Gradually, thanks to his talent, P. P. Lazarev acquired an increasingly independent position in the laboratory, soon becoming the assistant and right hand of P. N. Lebedev, who always highly valued his exceptional abilities. Working in Lebedev’s laboratory, P. P. Lazarev prepared his dissertations in physics—his master’s and doctoral dissertations. The first was devoted to the study of the temperature jump at the boundary between a solid body and a gas and showed that the jump extends over the length of the free path of a molecule. This subject was also of practical interest in connection with certain possibilities for increasing the sensitivity of thermoelements. The subject of P. P. Lazarev’s dissertation for the degree of doctor of physics was “The Fading of Dyes and Pigments in the Visible Spectrum.” This dissertation was defended by him in Warsaw in 1912.

In this work P. P. Lazarev investigated with the utmost thoroughness the basic laws of the chemical action of light. For the first time, by a quantitative method, a connection was established between the amount of a substance decomposed under the influence of light and the absorbed energy, the dependence of the reaction rate on the wavelength of light, and the influence of oxygen on fading. The work prompted a number of studies both in Russia and abroad and provided material for establishing the general kinetics of photochemical reactions. According to specialists, P. P. Lazarev’s doctoral dissertation is one of the few fundamental works of pre-quantum photochemistry.

Along with his research work in P. N. Lebedev’s laboratory, P. P. Lazarev also began teaching at a number of higher educational institutions in Moscow—at Moscow University, the Moscow Higher Technical School, and the Shanyavsky Moscow City University. In 1911, when, as a protest against the gross interference in the internal life of Moscow University by the tsarist Ministry of Public Education under Kasso, a large group of progressively minded professors and instructors left the university, P. P. Lazarev was among those who departed. The center of scientific research and scientific-pedagogical life in Moscow was transferred to a considerable extent to the City University named after Shanyavsky, which had been established with private and public funds. The physics laboratory of Shanyavsky University, created

specially for P. N. Lebedev, was housed at that time in a modest semi-basement room in Dead Lane (now Ostrovsky Lane). With the death of P. N. Lebedev in 1912, the leadership of Lebedev’s laboratory passed to P. P. Lazarev, whose scientific interests embraced a very broad range of problems in physics, biophysics, and geophysics. At this time he devoted particular attention to questions of biophysics, to elucidating the physicochemical regularities of nervous excitation.

Developing ideas on the role of ions in the processes of physiological excitation of tissues—ideas expressed in their initial form as early as the end of the last century by the Russian scientist Prof. Yu. V. Chagovets—P. P. Lazarev applied them in an original way to the analysis and deepening of the laws established by Nernst and Loeb as applied to the irritation of nerves and muscles by electric current and salt solutions. According to Lazarev, the initial process of physiological excitation is the coagulation of colloidal protein particles. The greater or lesser ease with which this moment occurs—in other words, the stability of the system—depends on the magnitude of the surface tension of the particles. The magnitude of the surface tension, in turn, changes with changes in the electric charge of the particles. “The addition of an electrolyte to a colloid solution causes neutralization of the charges of the colloid particles by the charges of the ions, and this changes the surface tension, causing precipitation of the colloid. As can be shown in a series of experiments, colloidal solutions are indeed precipitated by those ions which have a sign opposite to the sign of the charge of the colloid particles and can neutralize the charges of the colloid; conversely, ions of the same sign act on the colloid by protecting it from coagulation” (P. P. Lazarev, The Ionic Theory of Excitation, Works, vol. 2, publ. by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow–Leningrad, 1950, p. 34). Proceeding from such notions, P. P. Lazarev theoretically derived a formula determining the onset of excitation. This formula, which before Lazarev had figured in Loeb as a purely empirical generalization, is very simple:

\[ \frac{c_1}{c_2+b}=\text{a constant value}, \]

where \(c_1\) and \(c_2\) denote the concentrations of antagonist ions, and \(b\) is a certain constant. This formula also formed the basis of that ionic theory of excitation of living tissues which P. P. Lazarev and his numerous collaborators developed deeply and broadly throughout Pyotr Petrovich’s life, and which is closely linked in the history of science with his name. In accordance with this basic formula, P. P. Lazarev also derived the laws of the action of electric current on nervous tissue. The action of current was understood as a transfer of ions, as a result of which their relative concentration at the semipermeable cellular membranes changes; along with the transfer of ions by the electric current, displacements of ions also take place owing to

diffusion. Having theoretically analyzed the possible cases here, P. P. Lazarev derived the fundamental laws of physiological excitation—the Nernst and Pflüger laws. In a number of theoretical and experimental works, both by P. P. Lazarev himself and by his collaborators, the applicability of the fundamental law of the ionic theory of excitation to the excitation of nerves, muscles, sense organs, and the central nervous system was demonstrated.

In 1912 P. P. Lazarev was elected professor at the Moscow Higher Technical School, and in 1916—professor of physics at Petrograd (now Leningrad) University. Pyotr Petrovich, however, declined to move to Petrograd and remained in Moscow. Soon, in 1917, P. P. Lazarev was elected an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences to the chair of physics, which had become vacant upon the death of Academician B. B. Golitsyn.

The Great October Socialist Revolution found Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev in the prime of his strength and energy. From the very first days of the revolution he unhesitatingly took the side of the victorious people and showed the greatest activity in assisting Soviet public health, military affairs, and the national economy. The revolution is the most important, critical period in the life of the country, and everyone is obliged in every way to help his homeland in these days—said Pyotr Petrovich. From 1917 he headed the physical laboratory of the Higher School of Military Camouflage of the Red Army. Here, under his direction, a series of studies was carried out concerning the activity of the sense organs under military conditions; the reflection spectra of a number of colored objects were studied, and a scientific basis was provided for the selection of protective colors. At the suggestion of People’s Commissar of Health N. A. Semashko, P. P. Lazarev assumed overall leadership of the X-ray, electromedical, and photobiological sections of the People’s Commissariat of Health and carried out an enormous amount of scientific and technical work there. The X-ray institutions created by P. P. Lazarev were excellently equipped and enjoyed great authority. When it became necessary to subject the ailing V. I. Lenin to X-ray examination, this was done in the X-ray room of P. P. Lazarev’s laboratory.

From the very first years after the establishment of Soviet power, P. P. Lazarev developed work on geophysics on a vast scale in connection with the investigation of the Kursk magnetic anomaly.

As early as the seventies of the last century it had been noted that in certain localities of Kursk Province there existed a considerable magnetic anomaly. Having become interested in this, Professor of Moscow University E. E. Leist, on his own, privately, for more than 20 years carried out geomagnetic surveys in Kursk Province and made measurements at more than 4,000 points in it. As a conclusion, Prof. E. E. Leist asserted the presence

PYOTR PETROVICH LAZAREV

in the depths of the region he had surveyed, of enormous deposits of iron. In 1918 Prof. E. E. Leist fell ill and went to Germany for treatment. He took with him abroad the map of the geomagnetic surveys he had carried out in Kursk Province. Prof. Leist died in Germany, and all the things that had been with him, together with the map, fell into the hands of certain German speculators. Well aware of the national-economic significance of the map compiled by Prof. Leist, these persons offered to sell the map to the Soviet government for an exorbitantly large sum. These terms were rejected, and P. P. Lazarev spoke in favor of repeating and expanding the investigations of the Kursk magnetic anomaly. At the suggestion of V. I. Lenin, P. P. Lazarev was brought in to organize this enormous undertaking. In the very first year of work in the region of the town of Shchigry, the presence of enormous magnetic anomalies was established. Despite the still far from ended civil war, expeditions were sent to Kursk Province, to localities immediately adjacent to the fighting, and they zealously carried out magnetic, gravitational, and geophysical measurements—expeditions directed, inspired, and instructed by P. P. Lazarev. The processing of the extensive materials collected by the expeditions showed beyond doubt that the anomaly was caused by enormous deposits of iron ore. Test drilling confirmed the scientific predictions: iron was found. The total quantity of iron present in the Kursk region, according to the conclusions of the commission for the investigation of the Kursk magnetic anomaly, exceeds all the reserves of it available in Europe. For the discovery of this most important fact, our country is to a significant degree indebted to the tireless energy, scientific talent, and patriotism of P. P. Lazarev.

In 1919, on the initiative and with the active participation of P. P. Lazarev, a special Institute of Physics and Biophysics was created in Moscow. In keeping with the broad range of interests of its director, P. P. Lazarev, the Institute of Physics and Biophysics worked on a highly varied circle of problems concerning molecular physics, acoustics, optics, photochemistry, and carried out interesting geophysical work. Especially broadly, however, research in biophysics developed there, in which the basic propositions of Lazarev’s ionic theory of excitation were applied to the analysis of the regularities in the activity of our sense organs and of living matter in general. P. P. Lazarev was the first to develop and experimentally verify a theory of the adaptation (adjustment) of the sense organs to the stimuli acting upon them. The problems of dark and light adaptation of the eye were studied most broadly and in greatest depth. Here, for the first time, P. P. Lazarev proposed a theory of the process of excitation of twilight vision, taking into account the quantum character of the nature of light and the discrete

character of the light-perceiving elements of the retina. P. P. Lazarev initiated the application of quantum-statistical concepts to the interpretation of the process of visual excitation. Later, ideas linking vision with the quantum character of light were developed independently by P. P. Lazarev’s pupil, Academician S. I. Vavilov, and gave impetus to a number of foreign studies in the same direction. In his theory of adaptation of the eye, P. P. Lazarev showed the possibility of analyzing, in phenomena of the eye’s light sensitivity, both that which depends on purely peripheral factors (the concentration of the photosensitive substance in the retina) and that which is determined by central cerebral conditions—the state of the nerve cells of the cerebral cortex. In connection with this, P. P. Lazarev carried out a large number of experiments using various pharmacological substances and studies on people who were ill or were in special physiological conditions (for example, on pregnant women). Here he established a number of regularities, some of which are directly connected with I. M. Sechenov’s teaching on the inhibition by the brain of peripheral reflexes. Thus, for example, he showed that the period of labor (both normal and pathological) is characterized by a decrease in the sensitivity of the brain, determined by measuring visual adaptation. It was also shown that the sensitivity of the nerve cells of the brain changes regularly with a person’s age, revealing an optimum around 20–25 years. The theory of age-related change of the brain led Lazarev to attempts to prolong artificially the high physiological sensitivity of the brain by introducing certain drugs into the organism after preliminary irradiation of the head with X-rays.

A whole series of more particular questions of vision found in the works of P. P. Lazarev an original, theoretical physicochemical interpretation, successfully verified also in experiments. Such are the data of Lazarev’s theory of successive images, dark adaptation after preliminary strong illuminations, light adaptation, Talbot’s law, the Weber–Fechner law, and others. The phenomenon of the so-called “intrinsic light of the retina” was studied, and its significance for astrophotometric measurements was shown. In the field of studying the organ of taste, the Institute directed by P. P. Lazarev showed the possibility of obtaining any tastes by mixing only four taste substances (giving separately the tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty). The significance of ions for the irritation of tissues was studied by Lazarev also with respect to muscles. At the same time, at the Institute of Physics and Biophysics it was experimentally shown how periodic contractions of muscles depend on the ionic composition of the liquid surrounding the muscle.

PYOTR PETROVICH LAZAREV

The extraordinary diversity of P. P. Lazarev’s interests and gifts is attested by the fact that, alongside the broad development of biophysical work under his direction, in the same period investigations of a purely physical character were also being carried out—concerning the viscosity of glass and its hardening, capillary phenomena, electrodeless discharge, and many others. Among the geophysical works conducted on P. P. Lazarev’s initiative during this period, we shall mention experiments aimed at clarifying the causes of ocean currents (dependence on the trade winds). The influence of currents on the distribution of the Earth’s climates was demonstrated on models.

P. P. Lazarev attracted a large number of research workers to the work at the Institute of Physics and Biophysics, many of whom later became members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and prominent scientists of our country. Such were: S. I. Vavilov, V. V. Shuleikin, G. S. Landsberg, P. A. Rebinder, S. N. Rzhevkin, S. V. Kravkov, A. S. Predvoditelev, G. A. Gamburtsev, N. T. Fedorov, E. V. Shpolsky, P. N. Belikov, and many others.

From 1931 P. P. Lazarev headed the biophysics department at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine in Moscow. After the department was transformed into a special biophysical laboratory of the Academy of Sciences in 1938, P. P. Lazarev continued, theoretically and experimentally, to develop the problem of adaptation of the organ of vision. In doing so, P. P. Lazarev devoted special attention to clarifying the question of the participation of the brain in the phenomena of adaptation, to questions of the pharmacological effect on the light sensitivity of the eye, and to questions of the clinical application of adaptometry.

P. P. Lazarev’s activity was not confined to scientific problems. P. P. Lazarev’s vigorous energy manifested itself in broad pedagogical activity at a whole series of higher educational institutions, in his repeated representation of our homeland at foreign scientific congresses, and in extensive editorial and publishing activity. In the very first years of Soviet power, in 1918, P. P. Lazarev organized the publication of the journals Archive of the Physical Sciences and Advances in the Physical Sciences. Later, he also initiated the Journal of Applied Physics, which existed for a number of years. In 1940 P. P. Lazarev was elected vice-president of the Moscow Society of Naturalists.

Immediately after the Great October Socialist Revolution, P. P. Lazarev’s active public work unfolded: he served as chairman of the commission for improving the living conditions of learned physicians (KUBUV), was a member of the Central Commission for Improving the Living Conditions of Scientists (TsEKUBU), and took the closest part in organizing the Moscow House of Scientists. We have already mentioned above P. P. Lazarev’s organization of the new at that ...

during the period when the sick and wounded of the Red Army were being served by X-ray rooms.

To P. P. Lazarev’s pen belongs a series of excellently written popular-scientific sketches on the history of science, both Russian and foreign. Let us mention here, in particular, his essays—reminiscences about P. N. Lebedev, biographies of N. A. Umov, A. G. Stoletov, and others, as well as Essays on the History of Russian Science.

It may not be without interest to mention here also that P. P. Lazarev furnished his Essay on the Development of the Exact Sciences in Russia over 200 Years with portraits, drawn by him personally, of a number of Russian scholars—from Lomonosov to Mechnikov. In this one cannot fail to see further evidence of how P. P. Lazarev loved Russian science and was proud of it.

A small book by P. P. Lazarev, devoted to the life and work of the outstanding German naturalist H. Helmholtz, enjoys deserved renown. This scholar, who combined in himself, as did P. P. Lazarev, a physician-physiologist with a physicist-mathematician, always enjoyed special authority and affection on the part of the latter.

As a person, P. P. Lazarev was characterized by exceptional brilliance of mind, which grasped with astonishing ease and correctly assessed new and difficult questions relating to the most diverse branches of knowledge. With remarkable intuition he knew how to distinguish the essential from the inessential. He always strove to frame investigations of fundamental significance. P. P. Lazarev taught his numerous pupils to connect empirical investigations with theory, with a hypothesis that must precede the experimental accumulation of facts. While granting great freedom in scientific creativity even to beginning young researchers, P. P. Lazarev nevertheless unfailingly demanded clarity and concreteness in the formulation of questions and in the methodology of their solution. Always filled with new thoughts, hypotheses, and considerations, always vigorous and active, P. P. Lazarev was a splendid teacher of scientific youth, instilling in them optimism and faith in their own strength.

During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the biophysical laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, directed by P. P. Lazarev, was evacuated from Moscow to Alma-Ata. There, on April 23, 1942, P. P. Lazarev died at the age of 64 from a grave illness that had been gradually undermining his organism (cancer of the stomach). Death came suddenly from a metastasis to the brain. P. P. Lazarev’s body was later transported to Moscow, where it was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Despite the grave illness, indefatigable energy did not leave P. P. Lazarev up to the very last days of his life. Literally only a few days before his death he began to write a broadly conceived

…begun, but left only in an initial state, the book Periodic Processes in the Organism, Their Causes and Consequences.

P. P. Lazarev’s printed legacy is enormous: he published more than 500 works.

Principal Works of P. P. Lazarev

Fading of Dyes and Pigments in Visible Light. An Attempt to Study the Basic Laws of the Chemical Action of Light. Doctoral dissertation. Published by Moscow University, 1911; Investigations on the Ionic Theory of Excitation. Published by the Moscow Scientific Institute, Moscow, 1916; Foundations of the Doctrine of the Chemical Action of Light. Scientific-Technical Publishing House, 3 issues, Petrograd, 1919–1920; Ionic Theory of Excitation. State Publishing House, 1923; Foundations of Biophysics of the Earth. State Scientific-Technical Publishing House, 1939; Biophysics. A Collection of Articles on the History of Biophysics in the USSR. Published by the Moscow Society of Naturalists, 1940; Contemporary Problems of Biophysics. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1945; Energy, Its Sources on Earth and Its Origin. Gosenergoizdat, 1947; Studies on Adaptation. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1947; Essays on the History of Russian Science. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1950. The selected works of P. P. Lazarev are being published in 3 volumes by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1950, volumes II and III appeared in print.

On P. P. Lazarev

Shpolsky E. V., Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev, Advances in Physical Sciences, vol. 27, issue 1, 1945; Kravets T. P., The Creative Path of Academician P. P. Lazarev. Advances in Physical Sciences, vol. 27, issue 1, 1945; Deryagin B. V., On the Works of Acad. P. P. Lazarev in the Field of Biological Physics. Supplement to the book Studies on Adaptation by P. P. Lazarev, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1947; Kudryavtsev B. B., A Remarkable Russian Scientist. Journal Knowledge Is Power, No. 8, 1950; Article “Lazarev P. P.” Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 35, OGIZ, Moscow, 1937.