Varvara Aleksandrovna Brilliant-Lerman

Brilliant-Lerman, Varvara Aleksandrovna 

Born Apr. 5, 1888, in St. Petersburg; died May 17, 1954, in Leningrad. Soviet plant physiologist.

Upon completing the Bestuzhev Advanced Courses for Women (1912), Brilliant-Lerman studied fermentation and plant respiration with S. P. Kostychev. In 1920 she began working in the Main Botanical Garden (from 1931, the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), where she headed the division of ecology and plant physiology (1945-54). Her principal works were devoted to the study of photosynthesis. Brilliant-Lerman discovered the phenomenon of stimulating photosynthesis by the slight dehydration of plants (the Brilliant phenomenon). She also noted the emission of oxygen by plants in the dark.

WORKS

Okraska rastenii. Leningrad, 1924. (With V. N. Liubimenko.)
Fotosintez kak protsess zhiznedeiatel’nosti rastenii. [Moscow] 1949.

REFERENCE

Shkol’nik, M. Ia., and I. N. Konovalov. “Varvara Aleksandrovna Brilliant.” Trudy Botanicheskogo in-ta AN SSSR: Seriia 4, Eksperimental’naia botanika, 1955, issue 10. (List of her works.)