Alexander Chizhevsky

"[3] Chizhevsky used historical research (historiometry) techniques to link the 11-year solar cycle, Earth’s climate, and the mass activity of peoples.

[2] Chizhevsky was born in the town of Tsekhanovets (Ciechanowiec in Polish)[4] in Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Poland).

In 1915 he spent his summer observing the Sun and first hypothesized the effect of periodic changes in solar activity on the organic world.

He attended lectures in physics and mathematics and studied at the Medical Department of Moscow University while working at the Lazarev Biophysical Research Institute.

In 1935 he discovered the metachromasy of bacteria – the so-called "Chizhevskii-Velkhover effect" – enabling solar emissions that were hazardous to man both on Earth and in space, to be forecast.

An "In memoriam" in the International Journal of Biometeorology stated that he had "carved new paths and approaches to the vast expanse of unexplored fields.

[8] Chizhevsky proposed that not only did geomagnetic storms resulting from sunspot-related solar flares affect electrical usage, plane crashes, epidemics and grasshopper infestations, but human mental life and activity.

He found that a significant percent of what he classified as the most important historical events involving large numbers of people occurred around sunspot maximum.

"[11] In 1992 Arcady A. Putilov, a researcher in Animal and Human Physiology,[12] published a paper empirically testing Chizhevsky hypothesis analyzing events described in Soviet historical handbooks.

[13] In 1996 professor of psychology Suitbert Ertel (University of Göttingen) corroborated a "substantial" relationship between solar activity and revolutionary behavior through statistical analysis of a "Master Index of Violence from Below" (MIVE) for the period 1700–1985 CE.

[14] A main-belt asteroid (or minor planet) discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1978 is named 3113 Chizhevskij after Chizhevsky.