Alexander Chizhevsky. Captured by the Sun
The great scientist, philosopher, poet, artist with difficult fate, Alexander Chizhevsky was born in 1897 in the Grodno province of the Russian Empire. Fascinated by astronomy in his youth, he showed particular interest in the Sun and its influence on the Earth, its animals, humans, plants, historical and political events, and natural disasters.
Chizhevsky is recognized worldwide as the founder of a new field of knowledge – cosmobiology. He carried out numerous experiments to determine the degree of influence of solar processes on biological phenomena, looked for ways to anticipate changes in the Sun, to deal with the adverse effects of such changes on terrestrial organisms, and even to develop mechanisms of protection.
One of the areas of his work was the study of the effect of negatively ionized air on living organisms. This work led to the creation of the Chizhevsky lamp – a unique device used to ionize air, purify it, and inhibit bacterial activity.
The financial support of the Science Around Us non-profit foundation let us tell the general public about the talented scientist Alexander Chizhevsky and his difficult fate, his friendship with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and the years spent in the Stalin-era labour camps.
The film “Alexander Chizhevsky. Captivated by the Sun” was screened on 28 February 2019. It adds to the series of works within the documentary project “100 Names of Belarus” shot at the Vladimir Bokun Studio of history films. The previous films were dedicated to such famous scientists born in Belarus as Sofya Kovalevskaya, Ignacy Domeyko, Yakub Narkevich-Iodko, Zygmunt Wróblewski.
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