Mercury Sergeyevich Ghilarov (also written as Merkurii Giliarov, 22 February 1912 – 6 March 1985) was a Soviet soil scientist who was a pioneer of

soil biology Soil biology is the study of microbial and faunal activity and ecology in soil. Soil life, soil biota, soil fauna, or edaphon is a collective term that encompasses all organisms that spend a significant portion of their life cycle within a soil ...

, the life in the soil including insects and other small invertebrates. Ghilarov laid emphasis on the soil as a peculiar medium that consisted of a mix of liquid, solid, and gas phases and therefore suggested that it was the zone of evolutionary transition between aquatic and terrestrial life forms. Ghilarov (also spelt Giliarov in English) was born in

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

and studied entomology at the State University of Kiev from 1929 to 1933 after which he worked for the Ukrainian Plant Protection Station. He later moved to Moscow to work on rubber-bearing plants and then began to study soil insects. He obtained a Ph.D. in 1938 and in 1944 he moved to the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology where he proposed the idea of soil as a transitional environment between aquatic and terrestrial life. He wrote an influential monograph on “The specificity of soil as insect habitat and its role in insect evolution” (1949) and in 1956 he founded the first laboratory for soil zoology. He began to examine soil faunal compositions and established their use in a system to classify soils in the USSR. Ghilarov may have been the first researcher to systematically observe a relationship between organism biomass and abundance, and though this work in soils made little impact, a similar phenomenon in oceans would become widely known. Ghilarov received the USSR State Prizes in 1951, 67 and 80 apart from the

Mechnikov Mechnikov (russian: Мечников ''Mečnikov'', uk, Мечников ''Mechnykov, Mečnykov''; Metchnikov) is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov Ilya, Iliya, Ilia, Ilja, or Ilija (russian: Илья́ ...

Gold Medal from the

Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

(1978). He was also a recipient of the

Filippo Silvestri Filippo Silvestri (22 June 1873 – 10 June 1949) was an Italian entomologist. He specialised in world Protura, Thysanura, Diplura and Isoptera, but also worked on Hymenoptera, Myriapoda and Italian Diptera. He is also noted for describing an ...

Gold Medal (1965), the Gustav Kraatz Medal (1966) and other honours.

References

{{authority control 1912 births 1985 deaths Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv alumni Stalin Prize winners Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Recipients of the USSR State Prize Soviet soil scientists Soviet entomologists Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery