Vasily V. Dokuchaev

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Image:Dokuchaev2.jpg Vasily Vasilievich Dokuchaev (Василий Васильевич Докучаев) (1840 – 1903) was a Russian geographer who is credited with laying foundations of soil science.

He worked on soil science, and developed a classification scheme describing five factors for soil formation. He arrived at his theory after extensive field studies on Russian soils in 1883. His most famous work is Russian Chernozem (1883). Thanks to Dokuchayev's works a number of Russian soil terms are in the international soil science vocabulary (chernozem, podsol, gley, solonets). A crater on Mars is named in his honor.

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The scientific basis of soil science as a natural science was established by the classical works of Dokuchaev. Previously, soil had been considered a product of physicochemical transformations of rocks, a dead substrate from which plants derive nutritious mineral elements. Soil and bedrock were in fact equated.

Dokuchaev considers the soil as a natural body having its own genesis and its own history of development, a body with complex and multiform processes taking place within it. The soil is considered as different from bedrock. The latter becomes soil under the influence of a series of soil-formation factors (climate, vegetation, country, relief and age). According to him, soil should be called the "daily" or outward horizons of rocks regardless of the type; they are changed naturally by the common effect of water, air and various kinds of living and dead organisms.

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