Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a Russian, Ukrainian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. He is also known as the founder of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess' 1885 term biosphere, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.