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[ONE OF THE GREATEST SOVIET PHYSICIANS] Glaz i solntse: O svete, solntse i zrenii [i.e. The Human Eye and the Sun: About Light, the Sun and Vision]

Vavilov, S.

Moscow: Izd-vo Akad. nauk SSSR, 1938. Item #1324

96 pp.: ill. 16,3x12,5 cm. In original illustrated publisher’s wrappers. Couple of pale small stains on the wrappers, otherwise in very good condition. Previous owner’s stamp and inventory number on the title page.

Scarce. Third edition. First and second editions published in 1927 and 1932 respectively. Compared to the first edition, this third edition features additional information on the Sun.

The study of lighting techniques by one of the greatest Soviet physicians Sergey Vavilov (1891-1951). Three years after this edition was published, Sergey Vavilov’s brother, a prominent Russian and Soviet agronomist Nikolay Vavilov (1887-1943) was sentenced to death for receiving criticism from Trofim
Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943.

The book came out as a part of the series Akademiya nauk stakhanovtsam [i.e. Academy of Sciences for the Stakhanovits]. The series was initiated in 1938 by the wife of Vladimir Lenin, Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939), who at the time was an honorary member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. By the end of the Soviet second 5-year plan, the Academy directed its work at educating Stakhanovites (The Stakhanovite movement began in 1935 and was aimed at “building” workers that would took pride in their ability to produce more than was required, by working harder and more efficiently) and expanding their scientific and technical horizons. The series Akademiya nauk stakhanovtsam, which was terminated in 1941 shortly after Krupskaya’s death, became one of the most powerful tools used for this cause. In the de-Stalinization era, the Stakhanovite movement was cancelled christened as a Stalinist propaganda maneuver.

Printed in 1938, this book deals with theoretical and practical developments in lighting techniques and gives a brief introduction on the relationship of the human eye and the sun, describing the properties of light, of the sun, and of the human eye. The edition consists of four sections: “Introduction”, “Lighting”, “The Sun”, and “The Human Eye”. In the book, the author, the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1945-1951), lays out the history of the study of light and
attempts to define its essence based on the experiments carried out by Isaac Newton, Ole Romer, William Herschel, etc. The second section of the book describes properties of three different types of rays (direct, scattered, and independent) and focuses on solar energy and mass. The third and the final chapter of this edition elaborates upon the human eye, its peculiarities, flaws, and its correlation with the Sun. According to the author, the main capabilities of the human eye (daytime and night vision, etc.) is the result of the adaptation of the eye to sunlight. The book is supplemented with numerous black and white illustrations
showing elements of the human eye, various experiments carried out by scientists, etc.

Overall, an interesting study of the human eye and the Sun by one of the greatest Soviet physicians.

Sergey Vavilov graduated from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow University in 1914. Following the end of WWII, Vavilov started to work in the Physics and Biophysics Institute headed by Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev. In the next years, Vavilov and his co-workers elucidated the principal laws of luminescence, introducing the term “luminescent yield” as the ratio of the luminescent energy to the energy of exiting light. They also investigated the mechanisms of luminescent quenching and Vavilov pioneered work on the development of new and economical light sources – luminescent lamps. The founder of the Soviet school of physical optics, Vavilov co-discovered the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect, a discovery for which Pavel Cherenkov was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958. He was a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1932, Head of the Lebedev Institute of Physics (since 1934), a chief editor of The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, a member of the Supreme Soviet from 1946 and a recipient of four Stalin Prizes (1943, 1946, 1951, 1952), including 1 for the book The Human and the Sun.

No copies found in Worldcat.

Price: $550.00