This is one of those biographies that provide a window onto the broader understanding of science in its social and cultural context. Using Sergei Nikolaevich Vinogradskii's career and scientific research trajectory as a point of entry, this book illustrates the manner in which microbiologists, chemists, botanists, and plant physiologists inscribed the concept of a "cycle of life" into their investigations. Their research transformed a longstanding notion into the fundamental approaches and concepts that underlay the new ecological disciplines that emerged in the 1920s. The book presents a reconstruction of significant episodes of Vinogradskii's laboratory practices and the role of theory in their development. It paints the broader picture of the history of ecology, microbiology and soil science and how these are uniquely united: through the concept of the cycle of life.

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Bibliography Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- Part I. Plant Physiology.- Chapter 1. A Synthesis of Thermodynamics and Bioenergetics in Plant Physiology: The Investigation of a Moody Apprentice.- Part II Experiment and Natural History.- Chapter 2: The Exchange of Matter and the Transformation of Energy.- Chapter 3. The Laboratory is Nature: Investigating the Cycle of Life under the Microscope.- Chapter 4. Free Nature in the Laboratory.- Part III. Ecology.- Chapter 5. Vinogradskii's Transformation from Plant Physiologist to Ecologist, 1890-1920.- Chapter 6 - Soil Science and Russian Ecology.- Part IV. French Agriculture.- Chapter 7. The Master of Brie-Compte-Robert and his 'Direct Method:' Translating the Cycle of Life into Ecology.- Chapter 8. Ecological Microbiology.- Part V. The Impact of Vinogradskii's Work.- Chapter 9. Science is Ecological and Ecology is Scientific: The Uptake of Vinogradskii's Direct Methods.- Chapter 10. Vinogradskii's Reception in Russian and Soviet Microbiology Chapter 11. Conclusions.- Bibliography.