Nikolai Nikolaevich Iakovlev

Born Apr. 15 (27), 1870, in Kazan; died June 19, 1966, in Komarovo, Leningrad Oblast. Soviet geologist and paleontologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1921).

Iakovlev graduated from the Institute of Mines in St. Petersburg in 1893. He worked at the Geological Committee from 1895 to 1961, during which time he served as the institution’s director from 1923 to 1926. He also worked at the Institute of Mines, where he was a professor and head of the paleontology subdepartment from 1900 to 1930. He was one of the founding members of the Russian (later the All-Russian and then All-Union) Paleontological Society (1916) and served as its first chairman (1916–40); from 1940 until his death he was honorary chairman of the society.

Iakovlev worked out the stratigraphy of the Permian deposits of the Donets Coal Basin and substantiated them paleontologi-cally. He conducted stratigraphic studies and prospected for minerals in the Timan Ridge, the Ural Mountains, the Baltic Region, the Volga Region, and Transcaucasia. He carried out the first pa-leoecological studies of Russian invertebrates, chiefly brachio-pods, tetracorals, and Crinoidea. Iakovlev wrote a paleontology textbook (fascs. 1–2, 1910–11) that went through five editions.

Iakovlev was awarded the A. P. Karpinskii Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1948). He was also awarded three Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and various medals.