1926, Chizhevsky worked with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the world's first experimental research in the field of space biology. In 1929 he was elected to the Tulan Academy of Sciences and He lectured on biophysics at Columbia University in New York City. In 1931 he set up the Central Research Laboratory for Ionisation in USSR. His work in aero-ionification was supported by the Soviet government and was recognized by a Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of USSR. In 1935 he discovered the metachromasy of bacteria – the so-called "Chizhevskii-Velkhover effect" – enabling solar emissions that were hazardous to man both on Earth and in space, to be forecast. He was head of two aero-ionisation laboratories. In 1939 he was the Honorary President of the International Congress of Bio-physics held in New York City. In 1942, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin became aware of Chizhevsky's research work, including Physical Factors Of The Historical Process, and Chizhevsky was asked to retract his writings on solar cycles, which contradicted Soviet theories of the reasons for the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. He refused, was arrested and spent eight years in a forced labor gulag in the Ural mountains. He was released in 1950 and resettled in Karaganda in Kazakhstan where he underwent eight years of Soviet "rehabilitation" where he conducted science work in coal mines of Karaganda. While he no longer wrote on solar cycle theory, he returned to Moscow and introduced aero-ionic therapy (similar to negative air ionization therapy) into some medical establishments. He became a scientific consultant and ran an aero-ionification laboratory under the USSR State Planning Organisation. Chizhevsky also was a painter of water colors shown in Soviet galleries and the composer of hundreds of poems. Chizhevsky died in Moscow in 1964 after a long illness. An "In memoriam" in the International Journal of Biometeorology stated that he had "carved new paths and approaches to the vast expanse of unexplored fields." He is buried in Pyatnitskoye cemetery in Moscow with a headstone featuring an engraved carving representing the sun. Air ioniser In 1918, Chizhevsky created the first air ioniser for ion therapy. It was originally used for animal health in agriculture. Sunspots and mass excitability Chizhevsky proposed that not only did geomagnetic storms resulting from sunspot-related solar flares affect electrical usage, plane crashes, epidemics and grasshopper infestations, but human mental life and activity. Increased negative ionization in the atmosphere