Untitled

dreds of thousands publications, in thousands scientific sessions, conferences, and
symposia of every rank and scope, in numerous and diverse research programs, both
national and international. It will be no exaggeration to assert that the idea of the biosphere
occupies one of the central places both in the modem natural science and in the life of the
contemporary human society 3 .
It was this outburst of the interest to the biosphere that caused one to recollect all
what was written about it by V. I. Vernadsky. Many tens of articles about this V. I.
Vernadsky’s doctrine were published in Russia. The information about him began to
penetrate also into other countries. As early as in 1968, the UNESCO organized a
conference of the governmental experts on the theme: “The scientific foundation of the
rational use and conservation of the resources of the biosphere”. The Russian scientists V.
A. Kovda and V. E. Sokolov took part in the conference. Owing to them, the participants
acknowledged that V. I. Vernadsky is the author of the conception of the biosphere, and
took his ideas as a base for recommendations in the field of the coordinated action in
environment protection. The resolutions of the conference led to the establishment of a
continuous program “Man and biosphere”, approved by the UNESCO in 1970.
After the Paris conference, V. I. Vernadsky’s name began to be mentioned in
many articles of that flow of the ecological and futurological literature which arose in all
advanced countries beginning from the 1970s.
This process was stimulated by H. C. Hutchinson’s book Biosphere, where the
author set forth the content of the early works by V. I. Vernadsky dealing with this
envelope of the Earth. He considers these words in some detail, and gives them a high
estimate.
In 1979, in Oxford, a book Geia: A New Concept of the Life Development on Earth
appeared, written by an English physicochemist James Lovelock. In this book of interest,
the author develops the views very similar to the early V. I. Vernadsky’s concepts on the
biosphere, without even mentioning his name. J. Lovelock also advances the idea on the
close interaction between
Nauka, 1986, p. 98.
3 B. S. Sokolov. Biosphere: Concept,Structure,Evolution. V I. Vernadsky and Our Times. Moscow:
15