Kulagin, Nikolai

Born Jan. 7 (19), 1860, in the village of Shilovichi, in present-day Dukhovshchina Raion, Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR; died Mar. 1, 1940, in Moscow. Soviet zoologist and entomologist; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1913), the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1934), and the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935).

Kulagin graduated from Moscow University in 1884 and worked there until 1911. In 1919 he became a professor at Moscow University, where he established the subdepartment and laboratory of entomology. Since 1894 he had been a professor in the subdepartment of zoology of the Moscow Agricultural Institute (renamed the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy in 1923).

Kulagin’s basic works deal with beekeeping and the methods of combating agricultural pests. He wrote a number of studies on the evolution of the animal world, reproduction, and heredity. He is the author of the first Russian monograph on earthworms and of a number of works on mammals (for example, the European bison and the elk). Kulagin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.