Vladimir Kovalevsky (paleontologist)

This article is about the Russian paleontologist. For other people named Vladimir Kovalevsky, see Kovalevsky.

Vladimir Kovalevsky Владимир Ковалевский
1952 Soviet Stamp of Vladimir Kovalevsky
Born	02 August 1842 Vārkava, Vitebsk Governorate
Died	15 April 1883 (1883-04-16) (aged 40) Moscow
Scientific career
Fields	Paleontology

Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevsky (Russia: Владимир Онуфриевич Ковалевский; 2 August 1842 – 15 April 1883) was a Russian academic and paleontologist. One of the first adopters of Charles Darwin in Russia, he is most notable for his early work on the evolution of the Hippomorpha family. Brother of Alexander Kovalevsky. He married Sofia Kovalevskaya, and had a daughter named Sofia, nicknamed 'Fufa'. After spending some years together as a couple, Vladimir, financially ruined, a victim of depression and unable to support his wife and daughter, committed suicide.

Early life

Vladimir Kovalevsky was born in Vitebsk providence, outside of Palibino, the youngest of two children. His father, Onufry Osipovich Kovalevsky, was a Russianized Polish landowner and his mother, Polina Petrovna, was Russian. He spent his entire childhood at the estate, and was tutored until the age of 16. He had a grounding in foreign languages, and during his last year at Imperial School of Jurisprudence he earned money by translating books. After graduating in 1861, he gained employment at the Department of Heraldry but asked to travel abroad for his health. After traveling to Heidelberg, Tübingen, Paris, and Nice, he settled in London where he taught the daughter of exiled radical Alexander Herzen. This attracted the attention of the agents of the tzar. When he returned home, he published many scientific texts and, in 1866, Herzen's "Who is to Blame" of which the entire printing was burned by order of the censors. After his engagement to a young radical woman was broken, he met Sofia Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya) and the two were "fictitiously" married 27 September 1868.

Importance of work

Kovalevsky edited many scientific books, and on 27 February 1867 he wrote to Charles Darwin about translating his latest book, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. His translation work was so fast that the Russian copy of Variation was published several months before the "original" English version. He also translated The Descent of Man, which he and Sofia had to carry through Prussian lines into besieged Paris during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In his lifetime, his only original work was his thesis, On the Osteology of the Hyopotamidae, in which he "documented the most famous evolutionary story of all", the transformation of a small ancestor with many toes into the large, single-toed modern horse. He also identified the primary basis for this transformation, which was a shift in their environment from eating leaves in the woodlands and marshes to grazing grass on the open plains.

Return to Russia and suicide

Kovalevsky returned with his wife to Russia by 1878, with the hopes of becoming a professor of paleontology, which he was unable to attain in Europe. In October, they had a child by the name of Sofya, who they called "Foufie". However, the teaching job did not come through. Kovalevsky subsequently entered a bad business situation which led to his disgrace. Humiliated, Kovalevsky committed suicide.

Selected works

• Kovalevsky, Vladimir (1873), "On the Osteology of the Hyopotamidae", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series I, 163: 19, Bibcode:1873RSPT..163...19K

Further reading

• Cooke, Roger (1984).The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya (Springer-Verlag) ISBN 0-387-96030-9
• Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1987). Sofia Vasilevna Kovalevskaia in Louise S. Grinstein, Paul J. Campbell, ed. (1987), Women of Mathematics: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, Greenwood Press, New York, ISBN 978-0-313-24849-8