Vladimir Rodionovich Volobuev

Born July 12 (25), 1909, in Krasnodar. Soviet soil scientist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968) and academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR (1958).

Upon graduating from the Kuban’ Agricultural Institute (1930), Volobuev worked in the Mugan’ Experimental Land-Reclamation Station. From 1952 to 1957 he was the director of the Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR. From 1957 to 1959 he was the vice-president and from 1959 the academician-secretary of the Department of Biological Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR. As a result of his investigation of large irrigation and land-reclamation projects of Azerbaijan SSR, Volobuev established the principles of land-reclamation districting and created a theory of soil leaching. He also examined problems of ecology and soil classification and diagnostics. He was the first to develop an opinion about the energetics of soil formation. Volobuev received the V. V. Dokuchaev Prize in 1958 and the State Prize of the USSR in 1967.