Nikolai Mikhailovich Fedorovskii

Born Nov. 30 (Dec. 12), 1886, in Kursk; died Aug. 27, 1956, in Moscow. Soviet mineralogist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1933). Participant in the revolutionary movement from 1902. Member of the CPSU from 1904.

Fedorovskii graduated from Moscow University in 1915. In 1917–18 he was a member of the Nizhny Novgorod revolutionary committee and chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod provincial committee of the RSDLP(B). In 1918 he was director of the mining division of the All-Russian Council of the National Economy, and from 1922 to 1927, a member of the Collegium of the Science and Technology Division of the All-Russian Council of the National Economy. One of the founders of the Moscow Academy of Mines, he headed the academy’s subdepartment of mineralogy from 1918 to 1923.

In 1923, Fedorovskii founded the Ail-Union Scientific Research Institute of Mineral Raw Materials, of which he was director until 1937. At the institute, he was the first to apply the integrated method to the overall study of minerals, from methods of locating and surveying deposits to the development of the technology for exploiting the deposits. He also devised a classification of minerals based on energy criteria and industrial application.

Fedorovskii was a deputy to the Seventh Congress of the RCP(B), held in 1918. He was also a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.