The rebel boy received support from the state, which needed romantics. He went to the East to make his dreams come true. When the war began, he came to the rescue of the Fatherland.
The craving for knowledge opened the way for our hero to the circle of the most famous scientists of the country of the Soviets. Difficult times challenged educated people, and this man coped with a difficult task, glorifying his name.
Childhood
Pasha was born in the summer of 1892 in Moscow. His father Alexander came from peasants. At a young age, he moved from a village in the Yaroslavl province to the second largest and most important city in the Russian Empire. The guy was lucky - he quickly got used to it, found a job and a wife and felt like a Muscovite.
The Baranov family was poor and ambitious. The son received his primary education at a school for peasant children, and then entered a trade school. The parent dreamed of seeing his heir as a merchant. He did not like that Pavlik was interested in books much more than in the intricacies of business. However, the old man remembered how he himself went to the city for a better life, and understood that independence would still help out his child.
Youth
The boy was educated in the field of commerce, to which he had no heart at all. He dreamed of studying at the university, but only young people who graduated from high school were accepted there. Parents could not afford the luxury of paying for their child's tuition in an upper-class school. Pasha could only do self-education.
In 1910, the daring young man showed up for the exam together with the graduates of the gymnasium. The venture ended successfully - he received a certificate of maturity and in the same year became a student at Moscow University. The young man entered the Faculty of Law. Delight with his own achievements very quickly gave way to disappointment - Baranov realized that he had made a mistake with the choice of a specialty. In 1911 he transferred to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, where there was a department of natural sciences.
In the land of the Soviets
Pavel Baranov was lucky to receive his diploma in the turbulent 1917. The young specialist was carried away by the idea of the new government to make the dream of universal literacy come true. He began working in the institutions of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR, taught in schools and universities in Moscow. In 1920, the teacher was tempted to go to Central Asia and start training local personnel for science and educational activities there.
In the new place, the career of our hero developed at a rapid pace. A boy from Moscow arrived in Tashkent and got a place at the Turkestan State University, and 8 years later he headed the library of this educational institution and the department of morphology and anatomy of plants. Pavel Aleksandrovich worked not only in the laboratories and classrooms of the university, since 1921 he took part in expeditions across Central Asia.
Chief botanist
A child of the revolutionary era, Baranov inherited the best features of his generation. He put his soul into the enlightenment of the inhabitants of the eastern republics. After the expedition to the Pamirs, the scientist got the idea to open a biological station there. In 1937, the first botanical garden in the region appeared next to it. In his personal life, our hero adhered to a conservative lifestyle.
The merits of Pavel Baranov were appreciated by his appointment to the post of director of the Botanical Institute of the Uzbek branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It happened in 1940. A year later, Central Asia became the rear, on which the fighting efficiency of the Red Army and the lives of many citizens of the Soviet Union depended. Now Pavel Baranov had to tackle more ambitious tasks than one of the republics reaching a high level of culture and economy.
Contribution to Victory
One of the main problems of the USSR after the attack of Nazi Germany was food. The enemy invaded with lightning speed the lands that traditionally supplied the country with agricultural products. Now the entire burden of responsibility for provisions has been laid on the East. Pavel Baranov made sugar beet the subject of his research. Successes in root crop breeding were highly appreciated - in 1943 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the next year he was transferred to work in the capital.
In Moscow, our hero was entrusted with the care of the botanical garden of the Academy of Sciences, making him deputy director of this important institution. In the biography of Baranov, there was already the creation of a similar botanical laboratory from scratch. He undertook the restoration of the war-torn property of the country with firm confidence in the success of the venture.
last years of life
After the Victory, Pavel Aleksandrovich headed the Laboratory of Plant Morphology and Anatomy in the Botanical Garden, took up teaching and literary activities. From the pen of the famous botanist came scientific works and popularization works. In 1952 he moved to Leningrad, where he received the post of director of the V. L. Komarov Botanical Institute. A year later, the professor, respected by all, was elected to the city Council of Deputies.
In his old age, Pavel Baranov fell in love with rest at a dacha in the village of Komarovo near Leningrad. In the spring of 1962 he fell ill. The professor hoped that he would soon return to his work. For 4 years he was already on the Presidium of the National Committee of Soviet Biologists, participated in the work of international congresses of scientists, where global projects were discussed and plans for the future. They failed to come true - Pavel Alexandrovich died in May of the same year.
