Iosif Shpindler

Born 1848; died 1919. Russian hydrographer, oceanographer, and meteorologist.

Shpindler graduated from the hydrographic division of the Marine Academy in St. Petersburg in 1874 and that same year became director of publication of the marine bulletin at the Main Physical Observatory. In 1884 he became head of the meteorological section of the Ministry of the Navy. In 1888 he began lecturing at the Marine Academy. Between 1890 and 1897, Shpindler organized oceanographic expeditions to study the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, the Sea of Marmara, Lake Chudskoe, Kara-Bogaz-Gol, and other bodies of water. In 1891 he became one of the editors of the Meteorologicheskii vestnik (Meteorological Herald). Shpindler published many works on oceanography and marine meteorology, among them Hydrology of the Sea (Oceanography) (parts 1–2, 1914–15), the first Russian monograph on oceanography.