Vladimir Vernadsky

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a Russian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist, born in 1863 in Saint Petersburg and died in 1945 in Moscow. He is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry and radiogeology, and was a founding academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. His 1926 book The Biosphere argued that living matter is itself a geological force shaping Earth's crust, atmosphere and hydrosphere, and he later described the noosphere as a further stage of planetary development shaped by humanity's rational activity.