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Vasily Robertovich Williams
About museum
Vasily Robertovich Williams was a Russian and Soviet soil scientist-agronomist, an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR, and VASKhNIL. One of the founders of agronomic soil science. He was born into the family of an engineer — a citizen of the United States who emigrated to Russia in the mid-19th century.
In 1883 Williams graduated from a realschule, and in 1888 from the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy. From 1891 he taught a general course in agriculture at the Petrovskaya Academy. In 1894 he defended his master's thesis dedicated to the mechanical analysis of soils. After the academy was transformed into the Moscow Agricultural Institute, he became an adjunct professor, and then, from 1897, a professor of the Department of Soil Science and General Agriculture. From May 1907 to November 1908 Williams headed the institute, and from 1922 to 1925 he served as rector of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.
From 1927 to 1934 Williams participated in the creation of the "Technical Encyclopedia", writing a number of articles on soil science. In 1904 he established a grass nursery at the institute, in 1911 organized courses on grassland management, and in 1914 an experimental station for the study of forage crops, which later became the All‑Russian Research Institute of Forages. Vasily Robertovich Williams died in 1939 and was buried in the Timiryazev Cemetery, in the dendrological garden on the academy's grounds, where he had lived for more than fifty years.
Date of birth
09 October 1863
Date of death
11 November 1939
Occupation
Scientist