Gauza biography

Gausa Scientific biography of George Frantsevich Gause is simply amazing. He made an outstanding contribution to a variety of areas of biology and medicine. And in the literature there is even an opinion that there were two Gauze. One studied the problems of ecology, evolutionary theory and cytology, and the other belongs to the founders of modern doctrine of antibiotics.

In fact, this was the same researcher, and it would seem that he is isolated work closely interconnected. But let's start with a brief biography. Gauze was born in Moscow on December 27, his father Franz Gustavovich Gauze was born and raised in Lithuania, but then went to study in St. Petersburg, where he received the specialty of the architect, and later became a professor and dean of the Moscow Architectural Institute.

The mother of George Frantsevich Ivanova Nadezhda Mikhailovna was the ballerina Bolshoi Theater, and her father played the violin of the same theater in the ensemble. Back at school, George became interested in the zoology of invertebrates, and at the age of 15 he met the famous zoologist V. Alpatov, who gave him literature and talked with him on various scientific topics. Gauze was amazed at the wide scientific horizons of Alpatov, especially in the field of ecology, genetics and evolutionary teaching.

During these years, Georgy Frantsevich had already begun to conduct scientific work and took up the problems of variability using biometric methods. In the year, even before entering the university, he published in Germany his first scientific work dedicated to the variability of Asian locusts. In the city of Gauza, he entered the Moscow University at the Biological Department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.

At that time, the Soviet government pursued a policy of active set of students from representatives of the working class. It was difficult for a young man from an intelligent family to enter the university. Georgy Frantsevich was enrolled in the university only thanks to the request of the director of the Zoological Museum of the University of Kozhevnikov and the scientific guardian of the Alpatov collections.

Soon after Gausa arrived at the University of Alpatov, he went to the United States on a two -year business trip as a Rockefeller scholarship. Before leaving, he asked his colleague and friend E. Smirnov to lead the scientific work of the young Gauz. Timiryazev at the Communist Academy, which at that time was the largest biological scientific center in Moscow. Its director was a cytogenet with a world name S.

Participation in scientific conferences and seminars, active work in the field of mathematical biology turned out to be very useful for the formation of a young scientist. In the year, Alpatov returned from the United States, where he spent two years working in the Laboratory of Population Studies at the University of J. Hopkins in Baltimore. He was headed by the Laboratory of Raymond Pearl, who was the leader of American scientists who worked in the field of biometrics.

In particular, he rejected the so -called logistics curve of population growth. The biological meaning of the curve is that in the conditions of the action of limiting factors, food, temperature, humidity of the population growth of animals obey the 8-shaped curve. Pearl began his population studies in the study of the growth of the population of the United States, and later transferred them to the laboratory and carried out at a wide variety of objects.

But after Perl visited the Laboratory of T. Morgan at the Columbia University, the fruit fluster Drosophila became his favorite object. The Parla project included a mathematical and experimental study of individual or, more precisely, isolated populations. In e gg. However, no one of the experimenters has entered into the study of interpretation interactions, and there were literally unlimited possibilities for important observations and opening new natural phenomena.

Georgy Frantsevich immediately took up work. At first, he, as it were, repeated the study of the peral in the growth of human populations. Already at the beginning of the city, according to the rules for publication in this journal, the recommendation of the academician was needed, and this recommendation was given by V. in a letter of gratitude to Vernadsky Gauza tried to state the plan of future research in several proposals.

Gauze also said that he thinks a lot about the problem of organizing and integrating living matter. The conditions for experimental research were in the best way. In the year, Alpatov invited Gauz to work in an environmental laboratory at Moscow University. Within the walls of this laboratory, Gauza performed all his work on the ecology of populations and communities, natural selection, dsimetry of the protoplasm of the stereoisomeria cells, etc.

World fame gained experiments on competition among various types of protozoa. Initially, the growth of each species in a pure culture was studied, the coefficients of reproduction, intraspecific competition, the maximum number of population in a certain volume of the environment were calculated. Then, mixed crops of two types were created, in which the level of interspecific competition was determined and the causes of processes were clarified.In these studies, a small part of the population was seized daily with a platinum loop, and, therefore, artificial mortality brought the situation to the natural conditions in which some organisms always die.

The competition between the two types of ciliates that fed one of the types of yeast and lived in one space, always ended with the crowding out of one of the species. At the same time, the outcome of competition depended not only on environmental factors, but also on the presence of metabolic products of competing species. This was a new and important conclusion, since theoretical calculations were usually based on the initial biological properties of interacting species.

The cultivation of ciliates in the presence of mixed feed gave a different picture of competitive relations.

Although in these experiments the ciliates competed for food and space, not one of the species disappeared, both could coexist for an indefinitely long time. Since the food for the ciliates in this series of experiments was mixed food, consisting of yeast and bacteria, the cause of the coexistence of species could be seen in their food specialization, which was supposed to weaken the intensity of competition.

One species lived mainly at the bottom of the test tube and fed by the settling yeast cells, and the other was in the upper part of the test tube and fought mainly by bacteria. However, at the stern consisting of yeast cells alone, a balance was achieved between species, but under one condition: if the test tube was intensively illuminated. This was explained by the fact that the species that lives at the bottom of the test tube would inevitably die from a lack of food, but from a lack of oxygen.

But this did not happen, since the species existed in symbiosis with Zohlorerela algae, which, in bright light, supplied it with oxygen. The species, more sensitive to the lack of oxygen, lived in the upper part of the test tube, where it was quite enough. Therefore, each species existed in its own zone, but the survival of one of them was provided by algae symbiosis.

Based on these experiments, Gauz proposed its concept of an ecological niche, in which he combined the position of the species in space and its functional role in the community. These experiments on the competitive displacement of species were an experimental basis for the situation that included in world literature called the Gauz law, or the principle of competitive exclusion: two species belonging to the same niche cannot coexist for a long time.

Gauze's work on interspecific competition, its conclusions on the need to combine theoretical, experimental and field ecology laid the foundations of modern population environmental ecology, which studies the relationship of various groups of organisms among themselves and the impact on these relations of external environment factors. After the experimental work, the question arose of the attraction of the law of Gausa to natural situations.

Georgy Frantsevich turned to Alpatov for advice, but Vladimir Vladimirovich replied that he did not possess the necessary material as an entomologist. Thinking for a while, Alpatov went to the Gauz and said that the Russian Seton Thompson was working on the third floor, and he can help. It was about Alexander Nikolaevich Formozov. Georgy Frantsevich held a long conversation with Formozov, but did not receive a satisfactory answer.

And already at the end of the conversation of forms, he suddenly recalled the case that he observed on the shores of the Black Sea. Four types of tones live together and form a large colony. At first glance, it seems to be completely contrary to the experimental results of Gauz. However, although the species live together and feed on similar food, they get this food at different distances from the coast, and this is how the coexistence of species is achieved.

In this way, the Gauze law penetrated into a naturalistic material. Georgy Frantsevich felt well that after experiments and field studies indicated the importance of the concept of an ecological niche, it was necessary to improve the whole Darwin theory of struggle for existence. For such work, a partner was needed, impeccably owning a mathematical apparatus.

He was one of the best students of Academician Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam Alexander Adolfovich Witt, who died a few years later in the city, he managed to publish only a few works together with Georgy Frantsevich, who became classic in the field of mathematical biology. Gauze and Witt have studied all possible situations when species belong to one or more environmental niches.

These studies predetermined the further path of experiments by Georgy Frantsevich, where the concept of an ecological niche took a central place. The results of the research of Gauze were published in many domestic and foreign publications. The history of biology does not know the case that a researcher at the age of 24 has published a book that has become a desktop for many generations of ecologists and naturalists.

And two years later, Gauza awarded the degree of Doctor of Sciences on the totality of published work.A logical continuation of the study of the Gauz of the struggle for the existence of the protozoa became his experiments on the natural selection, performed in - gg. The novelty of the work was as follows. All experiments on the natural selection were carried out according to a well -verified scheme: mutations or recombination - natural selection.

This scheme did not give a complete explanation to the variety of mechanisms and forms of action of natural selection in nature. Already by the middle of the x. In general, genetics refuted this widespread look. However, population genetics did not give an answer to the question about the relationship of mutations and non -investigative changes in modifications in the process of natural selection.

Genetics simply ignored the evolutionary role of modifications, focusing on the study of mutations. To clarify the question of the relationship of mutations and modifications, that is, hereditary and non -investigative factors in the process of natural selection, and the experiments of Gauze were devoted. These experiments took into account the patterns of reverse dependence between the acquired and congenital properties of organisms: the stronger the sign is genetically fixed, the less possible modification of this feature when changing the conditions of the environment and vice versa, the less the role of the genotype in the predetermination of the sign, the more significant the value of the modification.

This provision was confirmed by numerous examples in genetics, ecology and physiology. It is significant that any sign was considered as a complex phenomenon, including genotypic and phenotypic components. Therefore, in order to understand the mechanisms of action of natural selection and formation of adaptation, both mutations and modifications are equally important. This provision was justified in numerous experiments of Gausa with freshwater and solopovodoval protozoa.

Salin and solutions of quinin were chosen as variable environmental factors.