Vernadsky was born on March 12, 1863, in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father, Ivan, was a professor of political economy and edited a liberal journal that barely escaped the Tsarist regime's censorship. Vernadsky's mother, Anna Petrovna Konstantinovich, was a teacher of singing who was neither as intellectual nor as politically inclined as her husband. When Vernadsky was five, the family moved to the more provincial town of Kharkov, where he received an introduction to nature and astronomy from his uncle. At the age of 13, Vernadsky moved with his family back to St. Petersburg, where he attended a classical gymnasium. Because a classical Russian education in this era did not include the sciences, Vernadsky and his friends were forced to form a study group of their own.

In 1881 Vernadsky...