From embryos to cybernetics

Location: main building / 3rd floor / 3rd floor gallery

Comparative anatomist, zoologist and embryologist Ivan Ivanovich Schmalhausen is known as the largest evolutionist of the 20th century. His work on evolutionary developmental biology was ahead of its time. Photographs and personal belongings, carefully preserved by Schmalhausen's descendants, will allow us to touch his life and trace the development of a scientist and a teacher year after year.

Ivan entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kyiv University. It was here that his meeting with A.N. took place. Severtsov, which largely predetermined the fate of the young biologist. Shmalhausen and Severtsov were the “Atlanteans” on whose shoulders the building of the modern Institute for Problems of Ecology and Evolution grew. Ivan Ivanovich stood at the origins of the Department of Theory of Evolution at the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University.

Are there similarities in the structure of a rat, a pigeon and a toad? Is it possible to detect evolutionarily similar structures in the structure of different classes and types of animals? The Manual of Comparative Anatomy by I. I. Shmalhausen, the first edition of which was published in 1923, still remains a reference book for zoologists.

What mechanism is behind evolutionary transformations? How does ontogenesis change with the appearance of new properties and the disappearance of old ones, with a change in the function of an organ or structure? The scientist studied in detail the growth of various organisms. Following him, we can trace how the chick, lapwing and sandpiper chicks change with age.

Ivan Ivanovich’s works are united by the idea of the integrity of the organism in individual and historical development. Contrary to the ideas of many evolutionists, I.I. Schmalhausen insisted that natural selection “evaluates” a living being as a whole, and not its individual characteristics.

The most important contribution of I.I. Schmalhausen in the development of the theory of evolution - the idea of stabilizing selection. The scientist showed that in stable conditions, when outwardly nothing seems to change, the most important rearrangements in the individual development of organisms occur. Under the influence of stabilizing selection, negative mutations, such as albinism, become recessive.

Ivan Ivanovich’s latest works were related to cybernetics and the study of regulatory mechanisms of ontogenesis, which interested the scientist all his life.