EFFECT OF SOLAR RADIATION ON INTRACELLULAR PROCESSES IN LIVING ORGANISMS At the beginning of this article we mentioned Timiryazev's classical research on photosynthesis. Timiryazev maintained that chemically photosynthesis is a process by which inorganic substances— carbon dioxide and water— are converted into organic matter. From the physical thermo dynamic viewpoint it is a process in which solar energy is converted into the chemical energy of organic matter. All manifestations of life on our planet and the welfare of mankind are directly dependent upon solar energy. Timiryazev, although well aware of the difficulties involved in the research of these problems, was convinced that any progress in pure or applied science required the collaboration of representatives of all branches of natural sciences, including physiologists, chemists, and physicists.
The Sun influences all beings, wrote Vavilov, and man must have a clear concept of the rule of the Sun in life on Earth so as to know what should be avoided, what can be utilized, and, as far as possible, how and what must be controlled /2/.
All the energy required for the organic syntheses in plant cells is derived from a single source— solar radiation. The synthesis of organic matter can be achieved only by solar radiation, through the agency of chlorophyll. With the aid of radiation the organism builds the molecules of protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, and enzymes providing the pre requisites for chemical reactions that constitute the material basis of life / 12/. The influence of solar activity is certainly not limited to photo synthesis, but covers all aspects of life on Earth.
Although we are not concerned here with the influence of solar radiation on the human organism, we should like to cite two or three instances which are directly related to all other representatives of the organic world.
About two years ago the French journal "Science et Future" published an article by A. Collo entitled "Biometdorologie." It stimulated the interest of scientists in several institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and in other scientific research organizations in the USSR. The article dwelt more specifically
on the reaction of colloid solutions in processes conditioned by the varying activity of solar radiation occurring in the ionosphere. "An invisible thread was stretched from sunspots to the chemist's test tube." Could that be possible? The Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Scien ces of the USSR unequivocally affirmed this possibility, since some of the cosmic rays are definitely of solar origin; their intensity is directly con nected with the solar flares, the appearance of sunspots, and with other manifestations of solar activity accompanied with magnetic storms on Earth.
In his article Collo mentioned that the French Academy of Medicine had established* that the incidence of severe heart disease— coronary thrombosis — is definitely connected with the advancing sunspots, i. e., intensification of solar activity. Danishevskii commented as follows: "The life processes take place in the fluid media of the organism, in solu tions of electrolytes with a definite concentration of positive and negative ions. The movement of ions determines the electrical activity of tissues manifested by the biocurrents in the brain, heart and muscles; there is a known linkage of these processes in the living organism with the electrical phenomena in nature, such as polar auroras and magnetic storms, and ultimately with sunspots. The increase in the number of sunspots coin cides with a higher incidence of coronary thrombosis, a fact recorded by many scientists in various countries of the world." Investigations performed by the prominent hematologist Shul'ts have been of outstanding interest. The commission for the investigation of the Sun, at the Astronomical Council of the Academy of Sciences, had, in 1960, organized the All-Union symposium on the subject Sun—troposphere, where Shul'ts reported the results of leukopenia analyses in a hundred thousand patients. It appears that leukopenia occurred as a consequence of intensi fied solar activity, as verified in the course of more than the complete 11-year cycle.