Ronov, Aleksandr

Born Dec. 3 (16), 1913, in Poltava. Soviet geologist and geochemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966).

Ronov graduated from Leningrad State University in 1938 and worked at the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1939 to 1943. From 1944 to 1950 he worked at the academy’s Institute of Earth Physics, where he developed a volumetric method for studying the process of sedimentation and the vertical movements of the earth’s crust. In 1950 he began working at the V. I. Vernadskii Institute of Geochemistry and Analytic Chemistry, where in 1954 he became head of the laboratory for the geochemistry of sedimentary rocks.

Ronov’s investigations have dealt with the evolution of the chemical composition of sedimentary rocks, the history as revealed through comparative studies of geochemical processes within the platform and geosynclinal zones of the continents, and the history of the formation of the chemical composition of seawater and atmospheric gases. Ronov is one of the authors of the Lithologic-Paleogeographic Atlas of the Russian Platform and Geosynclinal Framework (1961, 1962) and of the Lithologic-Paleogeographic Atlas of the USSR (1967, 1969). He has been awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and various medals.