Nationality RussianSoviet | Role Geologist Name Alexander Karpinsky Awards Wollaston Medal | |
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Died July 15, 1936, Moscow, Russia Similar People Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Timoshenko, Andrei Grechko, Mikhail Kalinin, Boris Shaposhnikov | ||
Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Карпи́нский; 7 January 1847 (NS) – 15 July 1936) was a prominent Russian and Soviet geologist and mineralogist, and the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and later Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in 1917–1936.
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Biography
Karpinsky was born in Turyinskiye Rudniki, Perm Governorate (now Krasnoturyinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast), in the Ural Mountains, into a family of mining engineers.
From 1857 to 1866 he was in the mining school in St. Petersburg and the last three years he attended the Mineralogical Institute, where he graduated in 1866. From 1866 to 1869 he worked in his home area in the Urals as a mining engineer.
He was invited to the Mining Institute, St. Petersburg in 1869 as an Assistant Professor, whilst also doing further studies and research. He was given full professorship in 1877. He stayed there until 1885. He was the imperial director of mining research from 1885 to 1916. Karpinsky was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1886, was elected its President in May 1917, and held this title until his death. His main research was chiefly done in the Ural Mountains, and he completed the first geological map of European Russia. He was able to preserve much scientific equipment and many invaluable records during the turmoil, and looting, of the Russian Revolution.
He was cremated and an urn with his ashes lies in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow, and is the oldest (by the date of birth) person to be so.