Armen Leonovich Takhtajan or Takhtajian (; surname also transliterated Takhtadjan, Takhtadzhi︠a︡n or Takhtadzhian, pronounced takh-tuh-JAHN; 10 June 1910 – 13 November 2009), was a Soviet-Armenian botanist, one of the most important figures in 20th century plant evolution and systematics and biogeography. His other interests included morphology of flowering plants, paleobotany, and the flora of the Caucasus. He was one of the most influential taxonomists of the latter twentieth century. Life Family Takhtajan was born in Shushi, Russian Empire, present-day disputed Nagorno-Karabakh, on 10 June 1910, to a family of Armenian intellectuals. His grandfather Meliksan Takhtadzhyan Petrovich had been born in Trabzon, Ottoman Empire and was educated in Italy, on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, an Armenian enclave, spoke many languages and worked as a journalist. He died in Paris in 1930. His father, Leon Meliksanovich Takhtadzhyan (1884–1950), was born in Batumi, Georgia and was educated as an agronomist at Leipzig University. Graduating in 1906, he worked on farms in France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and made a special study of sheep farming. He became proficient in German, French, English , Russian, Georgian and Azerbaijani. Arriving in Shushi in 1908, then a centre of sheep farming in the Caucasus, looking for work, Leon was forced to teach German at the local Realschule attached to the Armenian seminary, due to lack of opportunities in his chosen field. There he met and married Gerseliya Sergeevna Gazarbekyan (1887–1974), Armen Takhtajan's mother, a native of Susha, in 1909. Early life and education The Takhtajans had three children, Armen (1910–2009), Nellie (1914–1994) and Nora (1918–1965). In 1918 the family were forced to flee to northern Armenia because of the pogroms. Throughout his childhood, Armen showed a keen interest in natural history, travelling with his father. Armen attended school in Tbilisi in nearby Georgia, initially at Unified Labor School number 42 (former Mantashevskom commercial school). There he came under the influence of one of his teachers, Alexander Konstantinovich Makaev (Makashvili) (1896–1962), who had previously taught agriculture at Tbilisi State University, and had produced a dictionary of botanical names in Georgian, Russian and Latin. Makaev would take Armen on botanical excursions, teaching him to identify plants from Sosnowski and Grossheim's "Determinants of plant life in the vicinity of Tbilisi" (1920). In 1928 he completed secondary school and travelled to Leningrad. There he volunteered at the biology school at Leningrad University and attended lectures by Vladimir