Mikhail Stepanovich Voronin
[1] Voronin was born in St Petersburg on 21 June (2 July/August old calendar) 1838 into the family of a rich merchant, which was subsequently ennobled.
Professor Lev Semionovich Tsenkovsky excited in him an interest in investigating the lower plants, among which fungi were placed that time.
[citation needed] Although de Bary intensively investigated fungi, he suggested that Voronin study anatomical peculiarities of the shrub, Calycanthus.
Later on friends were introduced to the renowned algologist, G. Ture, who proposed that Voronin investigate phases of development of the Mediterranean alga, Acetabularia.
As a result, a large amount of experimental data was accumulated, which underlay Voronin's master's dissertation "Investigations of sea algae".
After taking a Master's degree in botany he refused a paying position at the University, because he did not want to be diverted from his scientific investigations.
After studying the ontogenesis of mucoraceous moulds on bread, Voronin decided to investigate the developmental cycle of typical representatives of different groups of fungi.
Investigation of Exobasidium on the cowberry was carried on in the classic manner: developmental phases of the species were studied in detail, different sensitivities of flowers and leaves to the fungus was established and correlation between the age of plant and its receptivity was revealed.
At the Second Meeting of Naturalists and Physicians of Russia (August, 1869, Moscow) Voronin was elected the secretary of the section of botany, anatomy and physiology of plants.
At the end of the 1860s and beginning of the 1870s his attention was attracted by two practical scientific problems: rust of the sunflower and club root.
He immediately commenced an investigation of the pest, studied its life cycle, established the presence of summer and winter (autumn) spores, revealed that spreading of the fungus agent as well as the disease caused by it are promoted by thickness of planting and non-observance of crop rotation.
Based on this example of rust on sunflowers, Voronin formulated major rules of the mass spreading of fungal diseases of plants.
[citation needed] At the same time (1869) near St Petersburg and other north-western regions of Russia club root disease began to spread.
The losses of transporters were so significant, that the Russian Society of Horticulturists in 1872 announced a competition to reveal the cause of this disease.
These fungi had attracted his interest as early as 1865, when he managed to collect Tuburcinia trientalis on the outskirts of St Petersburg.
16 years after, in 1881, he published his summarized work on smut fungi in Frankfurt in "Transactions of Zenkenberg Naturalists Society".
In the 1880s he concentrated on an investigation of fungi of the genus Sclerotinia, which remained his favourite object of study until the end of his life.
He found numerous species of fungi on affected ears, ranked them by extent of potential harm for human and animals and then singled out two the most probable initiators of the disease (it turned out subsequently that they were two stages of the same fungus).
