Boris Schwanwitsch, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetBoris Schwanwitsch
Russian entomologist
Date of Birth: 26-Nov-1889
Place of Birth: Poltava, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine
Date of Death: 05-Dec-1957
Profession: lepidopterist
Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius 
About Boris Schwanwitsch
- Boris Nikolayevich Schwanwitsch (or Schwanwitz), Russian: ????? ?????????? ???????, (1889, Poltava – 1957) was a Russian entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera.
- He is best known for his studies of the colour pattern of the wings.Boris Schwanwitz graduated from the St.
- Petersburg University (1908–1913).
- After graduation, he changed a number of academic positions: assistant lecturer in Entomology at the Stebut Agricultural School (1915), assistant lecturer (1919) and private-docent (1926) at Petrograd (Leningrad) University, professor at the Perm University (1928–1930).
- In 1930, he returned to Leningrad (St.
- Petersburg) to take the position of the head of Entomology department of the Leningrad University (1930–1931 and 1944–1955, 1930 to 1944 the dept.
- for Entomology was part of the Invertebrate Zoology dept.) Vice-president of the Entomological Society of USSR (1954–1957) and the chair of the Zoology section of the Leningrad Naturalists Society. In a series of papers he reconstructed the groundplan of the colour-pattern of the wings, first for the Rhopalocera, then for Heteroceran families.
- He formulated the stereomorphism principle, according to which the cryptic effect of the colour pattern is a result of its 'flattening' (the three-dimensional objects look flat) or 'disjunctive' effect (the two-dimensional objects look like a complex three-dimensional relief).
- To prove his point he built the plaster three-dimensional models of the lepidopteran wings, the photographs of which looked like an actual colour pattern of stripes and shades (photos were published in a series of papers and in his textbook in entomology).
- Among his other important contributions are a textbook in entomology with a large morphology section heavily based on Snodgrass and Weber (1949, still in use in Russian Universities), and a book on practical apiculture (1945). His gravestone is ornamented with a reproduction of the groundplan of the colour-pattern of lepidopteran wings from his textbook.
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