Died 26 November 1958 | ||
Tasia Maximova Stadnichenko (9 October 1894 – 26 November 1958) was a Russian born geologist and chemist whose fieldwork was focused on the distribution of germanium and the minor-element content in coal. She was born in Taganash, Crimea where she attended Petrograd University and joined the Russian Geological Survey before moving to the United States in 1918 to act as an interpreter for the Russian mission throughout World War I. After the war she continued her professional life as a researcher at the University of Illinois and as a professor at Vassar College from 1922 to 1935. In 1935, Stadnichenko led the first U.S Geological Survey exploring the minor-element distribution within coal by collecting samples of coal ash for element content analysis, which found germanium and other elements within the coal ash. Stadnichenko is widely considered instrumental in the discovery and understanding of coal's structure and origin.