The paper is devoted to the influence of outstanding Russian scientists Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev and Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchaev on the formation of the views of their brilliant student Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, his formation as a great Russian thinker and naturalist on a planetary scale, as well as their further creative interaction.

This article is about the world’s only cabinet-museum of the great world scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. The museum celebrates its sixtieth anniversary in 2023, the year of the 160th anniversary of the scientist. The museum contains items which accompanied V.I. Vernadsky and his wife Natalia Egorovna (nee Staritskaya) from the moment of their wedding to his last days. There are many photos and portraits of relatives and friends of the Vernadsky family on the walls. Vernadsky’s library had about 7,000 books, some of which are now in the museum. The museum has many books by V.I. Vernadsky himself, published during his lifetime and in recent years. The sphere of interests of the great scientist was huge. The exposition and the library of the museum tell in detail about the creative path of the scientist. Having started as a mineralogist, V.I. Vernadsky created physical (energetical) crystallography, genetic mineralogy. He is the creator of radiogeology. His studies of living matter, comparison of its properties and composition with those of mineral matter allowed the scientist to create a new science –biogeochemistry. In his scientific activity, V.I. Vernadsky paid much attention to the development of his doctrine of the biosphere, the transition of the biosphere into the noösphere. Vernadsky was a significant public and political figure of pre-revolutionary Russia. One can learn about all this from the museum’s exposition and from the story of the curator of the museum.

The paper is devoted to the outstanding Russian scientist Vladimir I. Vernadsky, who is one of the founders of ecology. As a student of V.V. Dokuchaev, he developed his teacher’s ideas of a systematic dynamic approach to the study of nature and introduced a deep scientific ecological content into the concepts of the biosphere and the noösphere. V.I. Vernadsky is the founder of a complex of modern Earth sciences (geochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiology, and hydrogeology) and the creator of many scientific schools. In his scientific work, he covered many research areas, from geology to the study of the role of living matter in geochemical cycles, from soil science to the biosphere, the increasing influence of scientific thought, human activity in the biosphere and its transformation into the noösphere. The importance of agriculture in the biosphere and the noösphere is considered. The biosphere is an area of active life on Earth (troposphere, hydrosphere and part of the lithosphere), the composition, structure and energy of which are mainly due to the activity of living organisms. The noösphere is its thinking shell. Agriculture, whose most important part are grassland ecosystems, is an important component of the biosphere, being a reproducible, autotrophic sustainable resource (energetical, environmental, food and feed). In light of the pressing environmental problems facing the world, environmental education and environmental thinking are a priority for the development of the biosphere, the noösphere and agriculture.

Having started his biogeochemical studies in 1916, V.I. Vernadsky revealed that the generally accepted opinion about the origin of life from inert matter had no scientific sources. But all data of biology and paleontology indicate that all life comes from life (Francesco Redi’s principle). Vernadsky found convincing evidence of biogenesis in the state of biological space–time, which allowed him to describe the biosphere as a planetary shell, actually forming other geospheres. Vernadsky’s concept of the planetary role of living matter is currently gaining overriding and fundamental importance for all Earth sciences.

The fulfillment of the tasks set by the 1949-1965 State Plan for Nature Transformation became the work of the whole country. Its goal was the development of sustainable agriculture in the steppe and forest–steppe regions of the European part of the USSR. It is an example of a responsible state attitude to the use and preservation of our lands and soil fertility. The State Plan for nature transformation was bases on the integrated reclamation of agricultural landscapes using a scientific systematic approach to the objects of research and management. State authorities, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, scientists from dozens of universities and research institutes, ministries, 80 thousand collective farms, 2 thousand state farms, and 3 thousand machine tractor stations took an active part in the organization and large-scale implementation of protective afforestation and the development of a grass-field farming system. The plan provided for the creation of 8 large state forest strips with a total length of 5,320 km, located along floodplains and watersheds of the Volga, Dnieper, Don, Ural, Seversky Donets rivers etc.; protective forest plantations in the fields of collective farms and state farms; consolidation and afforestation of sands on an area of 322 thousand ha; the introduction and development of a system of field and fodder grass-field crop rotations; and the creation of over 44 thousand ponds and reservoirs. Over the 5 years of the plan's implementation, more than 2.3 million ha of forest plantations have been planted in the country; an ecological framework of agricultural landscapes has been created on agricultural lands; over 13 thousand ponds and reservoirs have been created. The prototype of the scientific basis of the State Plan for Nature Transformation was the works by V. V. Dokuchaev, V. R. Williams and V. I. Vernadsky on the conservation of land and soil fertility. The implementation of the plan stopped in 1953 and the development of virgin and fallow lands began. Currently, the state, scientists, society, regions and agricultural producers need combining their efforts in the rational usage of natural resources, the preservation of agricultural land and soil fertility for the present and future generations.