Qodir Zokirov

Qodir (Kadyr) Zokirov was born on 25 July 1906 in Jalalabad (then in the Andijan uyezd of the Fergana region, now in Kyrgyzstan) into an artisan’s family; some sources give Andijan as his birthplace. In 1920 he joined the youth organisation “Likbez” (the literacy campaign) and took up public work, and in 1932 he graduated from a pedagogical academy.

He began his scientific and teaching career in Uzbekistan in the late 1930s. From 1937 he was a docent at Samarkand University and acting head of its botany department; in 1941–1943 he was a docent at the Central Asian University; and from November 1943 until 1952 he headed the botany department of the Nizami Tashkent Pedagogical Institute. In 1951 he received the degree of Doctor of Biological Sciences and the title of professor.

In 1952 Zokirov became head of the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, a post he held until 1955. In 1956 he was elected a full member of the republic’s Academy of Sciences and was named Honoured Science Worker of the Uzbek SSR. From 1957 he was president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, in 1959–1963 a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, and in 1963–1966 rector of the Fergana Pedagogical Institute. In 1966 he returned to the Institute of Botany, where he headed the department of plant resources; in 1969 he led the laboratory of saponin-bearing plants.

As a plant taxonomist Zokirov studied the borage, knotweed, poppy and sedge families, described new species and compiled a key to the families of the Central Asian flora. He proposed his own principle for dividing altitudinal vegetation belts, based on landscape, relief, hydrothermal conditions and the changes of vegetation and soil bound up with them, and named the belts “chul”, “adyr”, “tau” and “yaylau”. With his student Kh. A. Jamalkhanov he worked out Uzbek botanical terminology and a unified system of Uzbek names for taxa.

His main works are the two-volume “Flora and Vegetation of the Zeravshan River Basin” (the first volume appeared in 1955) and a classification of the world’s vegetation created with P. K. Zakirov (1969; an expanded version in 1978). He was chief editor of the four-volume “Vegetation Cover of Uzbekistan” (from 1971), and he proposed methods of bringing tannin-bearing and saponin-bearing plants into cultivation. In 1968 he won the Beruni State Prize of the Uzbek SSR, and he was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.

Zokirov died in Tashkent in 1992. Plants are named after him, among them Acantholimon zakirovii and Calligonum zakirovii.