increased human mass excitability. Chizhevsky proposed that human history is influenced by the eleven-year peaks in sunspot activity, triggering humans en masse to act upon existing grievances and complaints through revolts, revolutions, civil wars and wars between nations. He analyzed sunspot records (and approximated records), comparing them to riots, revolutions, battles and war in Russia and seventy-one other countries for the period 500 BCE to 1922 CE. (A process known as historiometry.) He found that a significant percent of what he classified as the most important historical events involving large numbers of people occurred around sunspot maximum. Edward R. Dewey, founder of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, analyzed and published his data in 1951 in the Foundation's publications. In a 1971 book Dewey described the "four components" of Chizhevsky's eleven-year cycle and their approximate lengths: 1) a three-year period of minimum activity characterized by passivity and autocratic rule; 2) a two-year period during which masses begin to organize under new leaders and one theme; 3) a three-year period of maximum excitability, revolution and war; 4) a three-year period of gradual decrease in excitability until the masses are apathetic. Dewey questioned Chizhevsky's theory because in Chizhevsky's data, the sunspot cycle height lagged about a year ahead his "mass excitability index." In 1992 Arcady A. Putilov, a researcher in Animal and Human Physiology, published a paper empirically testing Chizhevsky hypothesis analyzing events described in Soviet historical handbooks. Putilov found that the frequency and "polarity" of events, including revolution, is the highest in the years of the solar cycle maximum and the lowest in the year before the minimum. In 1996 professor of psychology Suitbert Ertel (University of Göttingen) corroborated a "substantial" relationship between solar activity and revolutionary behavior through statistical analysis of a "Master Index of Violence from Below" (MIVE) for the period 1700–1985 CE. Legacy A main-belt asteroid (or minor planet) discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1978 is named 3113 Chizhevskij after Chizhevsky. The Chizhevsky Science Center opened in Kaluga, Russia, in 2000, in the home where Chizhevsky lived and worked for a number of years. It is part of the Tsiolkovsky Museum. There Chizhevsky researched sun-earth relations and conducted experimental research on the effects of ionized air on a living organism, laying down basics of air-ionization. The center features exhibits, photographs and films, lectures and tours. Bibliography Alexander Chizhevsky, "Physical Factors of the Historical Process,"