Popov, Konstantin Mikhailovich

Born Apr. 15 (28), 1900, in the city of Port Arthur, now Lüshun. Soviet economic geographer, Orientalist, doctor of economic sciences (1944).

Popov graduated from the Kiev Economc Planning Institute in 1923. He became a professor at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1930. From 1950 to 1965 he headed the department of the geography of capitalist and developing countries of the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1965 he became a senior scientific worker at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He served as a consultant to the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the USSR from 1943 to 1970. His main works have been devoted to the geography, economy, and culture of Japan, as well as to a systematic study of the countries of the ancient Orient and the problems of developing countries.