Mitrofan Kuzmich
Tursky
At the center of the square at the intersection of Pryanishnikova and Timiryazevskaya Streets stands the only monument in Moscow to a forestry scientist – Mitrofan Kuzmich Tursky (1840-1899), professor of the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy. In 1876, M.K. Tursky was invited to teach forest sciences at the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy, where he soon assumed the post of head of the Department of Forestry. Contemporaries and students remembered Professor Tursky not only as a wise and demanding teacher, but also as a sympathetic, kind, and understanding mentor. “Neither lectures nor practical classes in the cabinet, still less in the forest, were attended by students with such diligence and such love as the lectures and work of M.K. Tursky…” (G.G. Daniel-Bekov, 1909). Mitrofan Kuzmich authored a great many works that have become immortal classics of forest science and education, and have lost none of their significance to this day. Among other achievements, Professor Tursky compiled tables for forest mensuration, developed a methodological scale indicating the light requirements of trees, and conducted experiments in growing trees and shrubs from seeds of various origins, laying the invaluable groundwork of provenance trials at the Forest Experimental Station of the Petrovsky Academy. The bronze bust was erected in 1912 on the grounds of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy (now the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy named after K.A. Timiryazev). The initiative to perpetuate the memory of the outstanding scientist came from the Academy’s teaching staff, in particular from Professor Tursky’s student, the head of the Department of Forestry, Professor Nikolai Stepanovich Nesterov. A fundraising campaign was organized to finance the monument, in which around four thousand people took part. From several projects submitted to a specially held competition, the work of sculptor P.V. Dzyubanov was chosen. The grand unveiling of the monument took place on July 29, 1912, in the square next to the Academy’s Forest Cabinet. The bust of Professor Tursky is mounted on a tall, four-sided granite pedestal. The scientist is depicted in the moment of delivering a lecture, as though addressing an audience; under his right hand lies a book. The lower part of the pedestal features a bronze bas-relief depicting a scene in which an elderly peasant and a boy plant a young pine tree. The front face of the pedestal bears the inscription: “M.K. Tursky (1840-1899)”. The rear face is carved with the dedicatory inscription: “To the glorious sower in the field of forestry – from forest Russia.”
Address: Moscow, Timiryazevskaya St., on the territory of household No. 49.
