Iurii Aleksandrovich Orlov

Orlov, Iurii Aleksandrovich

 

Born May 31 (June 12), 1893, in the village of Tomyshevo, present-day Novospasskoe Raion, Ul’ianovsk Oblast; died Oct. 2, 1966, in Moscow. Soviet paleontologist and histologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1960; corresponding member, 1953).

Orlov graduated from Petrograd University in 1917. He was an instructor at the University of Perm’ from 1916 to 1924 and at the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad from 1924 to 1935. From 1933 to 1941, Orlov was a professor at Leningrad State University. In 1939 he became a professor at Moscow State University, where he headed the subdepartment of paleontology from 1943 until his death. From 1932, Orlov was head of the department, and from 1945 director of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Orlov’s principal works dealt with the comparative morphology and paleoneurology of vertebrate fossils and with the neurohistology of invertebrates. He was the editor of Paleontologicheskii zhurnal (Paleontological Journal) from 1959 to 1966 and editor in chief of the 15-volume Foundations of Paleontology (Lenin Prize, 1967, awarded posthumously). Orlov received the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and a number of medals. The museum of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR is named in honor of Orlov.

WORKS

“Tretichnye mlekopitaiushchie i mestonakhozhdeniia ikh ostatkov.” Trudy Paleontologicheskogo instituta AN SSSR, 1941, vol. 8, fasc. 3.
“Peruniinae, novoe podsemeistvo kunits iz neogena Evrazii.” Trudy Paleontologicheskogo instituta AN SSSR, 1947, vol. 10, fasc. 3.
“Khishchnye deinotsefaly fauny Isheeva (titanozukhi).” Trudy Paleontologicheskogo instituta AN SSSR, 1958, vol. 72.

V. N. SHIMANSKII