Nikitin, Vasilii Nikitich
Nikitin, Vasilii Nikitich
Born Dec. 20, 1885 (Jan. 1, 1886), in Moscow; died there Feb. 2,1972. Soviet hydrobiologist; doctor of biological sciences (1935); professor (1937); Honored Scientist of the Georgian SSR (1944). Founder of a Georgian school of hydrobiologists.
Nikitin graduated from Moscow University in 1911. From 1920 to 1931 he was head of the biological station of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at Sevastopol’. From 1931 to 1937 he was assistant director of a scientific and fish-farming station in Batumi. From 1937 to 1946 he was head of a sub-department at the University of Tbilisi and chief of a division at the Institute of Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR. From 1946 he was head of the benthos laboratories and later of the laboratories of marine overgrowth and teredos at the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His principal works concerned the distribution of life in the Black Sea and the biology of animals used for food. He was awarded the Order of Lenin.