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Using Vinogradskii´s career and scientific research trajectory as a point of entry, this book illustrates the manner in which microbiologists, chemists, botanists and plant physiologists inscribed the concept of a "cycle of life" into their investigations.

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This is one of those biographies that provide a window onto the broader understanding of science in its social and cultural context. Using Sergei Nikolaevich Vinogradskii´s career and scientific research trajectory as a point of entry, this book illustrates the manner in which microbiologists, chemists, botanists, and plant physiologists inscribed the concept of a "cycle of life" into their investigations. Their research transformed a longstanding notion into the fundamental approaches and concepts that underlay the new ecological disciplines that emerged in the 1920s. The book presents a reconstruction of significant episodes of Vinogradskii´s laboratory practices and the role of theory in their development. It paints the broader picture of the history of ecology, microbiology and soil science and how these are uniquely united: through the concept of the cycle of life.
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Bibliography Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- Part I. Plant Physiology.- Chapter 1. A Synthesis of Thermodynamics and Bioenergetics in Plant Physiology: The Investigation of a Moody Apprentice.- Part II Experiment and Natural History.- Chapter 2: The Exchange of Matter and the Transformation of Energy.- Chapter 3. The Laboratory is Nature: Investigating the Cycle of Life under the Microscope.- Chapter 4. Free Nature in the Laboratory.- Part III. Ecology.- Chapter 5. Vinogradskii´s Transformation from Plant Physiologist to Ecologist, 1890-1920.- Chapter 6 - Soil Science and Russian Ecology.- Part IV. French Agriculture.- Chapter 7. The Master of Brie-Compte-Robert and his ´Direct Method:´ Translating the Cycle of Life into Ecology.- Chapter 8. Ecological Microbiology.- Part V. The Impact of Vinogradskii´s Work.- Chapter 9. Science is Ecological and Ecology is Scientific: The Uptake of Vinogradskii´s Direct Methods.- Chapter 10. Vinogradskii´s Reception in Russian and Soviet Microbiology Chapter 11. Conclusions.- Bibliography.

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From the book reviews:
"The book is an important contribution to our picture of shifting disciplinary boundaries, as well as to discussions of the not-so-black-and-white distinction between field science and lab science. ... it complicates our understanding of the streams of thought and methodology that blended into ecology and into Vernadsky´s biogeochemistry by 1920 or so. Thus, it is an important contribution to environmental history-particularly restoring the cycle of life concept to the narrative-as well as to the history of biology." (James Strick, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Vol. 48, 2014)

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