Pavel Florensky: Biography

This man was an outstanding mathematician, philosopher, theologian, art historian, prose writer, engineer, linguist and thinker of state scale. Fate prepared him for world fame and tragic fate. After him remained the work, born of his mighty mind. The name of this man is Florensky Pavel Alexandrovich.

Childhood years of the future scientist

On January 21, 1882, a railway engineer Alexander Florensky and his wife Olga Pavlovna had a son, who was named Paul. The family lived in the town of Yevlakh in the Elizavetpol province. Now this is the territory of Azerbaijan. In addition to him in the family will subsequently appear five more children.

Recalling his early years, Pavel Florensky writes that since childhood he has been inclined to notice and analyze everything unusual that goes beyond the ordinary life. In all things he was inclined to see the hidden manifestations of "the spirituality of being and immortality." As for the latter, the very thought of him was perceived as something natural and beyond doubt. According to the scholar's own admission, it was children's observations that later formed the basis of his religious and philosophical convictions.

Studying at the University

Finished with a gold medal gymnasium in Tiflis, seventeen-year-old Pavel Florensky leaves for Moscow and becomes a student of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University. In his student years, he closely communicates with representatives of advanced Russian youth of those years. Among his friends are Balmont, Bryusov, Z. Gippius, A. Blok and others, whose names are included in the history of Russian culture.

But after graduation, he felt a clear lack of knowledge obtained at the university. What further plans did Florensky build? Paul understood that for him the framework of the natural sciences is tight. The picture of the universe that formed in his mind did not yield to rational explanation. In search of new truths he enters the Theological Academy.

The Theological Academy

In the walls of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, he has ideas for the synthesis of natural sciences with religious postulates. In his opinion, secular culture, the church and art should form a single whole. After graduating from the academy in 1914, Florensky Pavel Aleksandrovich received the title of Master of Theology.

Even in the walls of the academy, he was ordained a priest. Here, in Sergiev Posad, until 1921, the young priest Father Pavel Florensky carried his pastoral ministry. The range of his studies during the study period was very wide. In the academy, he simultaneously studied, and taught, and lectured, and edited an academic journal.

The first years after the revolution

The revolution for him was a heavy shock. By his own admission, he took it as an apocalypse. The political convictions shared by Pavel Florensky can be called theocratic monarchism. They will be described in detail at the end of his life in a work that will be written in the camp shortly before his death.

In the first years after the revolution, his main activity was art history. Pavel Florensky made a lot of efforts to save the historical and artistic values of the Lavra. He had to literally convince the uneducated representatives of the new government of the need to preserve many historical monuments.

Work in Soviet institutions

Possessing a deep knowledge of the technical sciences obtained at the university, Pavel Florensky became a professor at VHUTEMAS and simultaneously took part in the development of the GOELRO plan. During the twenties he wrote a number of fundamental scientific works. In this work he was assisted by Trotsky, who subsequently played a fatal role in Florensky's life.

Despite the opportunity repeatedly to leave Russia, Pavel did not follow the example of many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia who left the country. He was one of the first who tried to combine church ministry and cooperation with Soviet institutions.

Arrest and imprisonment

The turning point in his life came in 1928. The scientist was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod, but was soon returned to Moscow. By the beginning of the thirties, the period of the scientist's harassment in the Soviet press was the period. In February 1933, he was arrested and five months later he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment by the infamous fifty-eighth article.

The place where he was to serve a sentence was assigned to a camp in Eastern Siberia, called, as it were, a mockery of the prisoners "Free." Here, behind the barbed wire, the scientific department of BUMLAG management was established. Worked in it were scientists who ended up in prison, like thousands of other Soviet people, in this ruthless era of Stalinist repression. Together with them, the scientific work of the inmate Florensky Paul.

In February 1934 he was transferred to another camp, which was in Skovorodino. Here was located the permafrost station, on which scientific works on the study of permafrost were conducted. Taking part in them, Pavel Alexandrovich wrote several scientific works, which dealt with issues related to construction on permafrost.

The End of the Life of a Scientist

In August 1934, Florensky was unexpectedly placed in a prison cell, and a month later he was escorted to the Solovetsky camp. And here he was engaged in scientific work. Investigating the process of extracting iodine from seaweed, the scientist made more than a dozen patented scientific discoveries. In November 1937, the decision of the Special Troika of the NKVD Florensky was sentenced to death.

The exact date of death is unknown. The date of December 15, 1943, indicated in the notice sent to relatives, was false. This outstanding figure of Russian science is buried, who made an invaluable contribution to the most diverse fields of knowledge, on the Levashovoy wasteland near Leningrad, in a common unmarked grave. In one of his last letters he wrote with bitterness that the truth is that for all that is given to the world of good, there is a payment in the form of suffering and persecution.

Pavel Florensky, whose biography is very similar to the biographies of many Russian figures of science and culture of that time, was posthumously rehabilitated. And fifty years after his death, the last book of the scientist saw the light. In it he reflected on the state structure of future years.