Sergei Semenovich Neustruev

Born Sept. 23, 1874, in Nizhny Novgorod (now Gorky); died May 25, 1928, in Syzran’. Soviet soil scientist and physical geographer.

Neustruev graduated from Moscow University in 1898. He then taught at a Gymnasium in Samara. Between 1908 and 1917 he worked at the Resettlement Administration in St. Petersburg (Petrograd). In 1918 he became a professor at the Geographic Institute in Petrograd (now the department of geography of Leningrad University).

Neustruev studied the soils of Samara Province (1898–1907), Middle Asia (1907–15), and Orenburg Province (1915–18). In 1926–27 he was director of the Kazakhstan Expedition sponsored by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Neustruev established the sierozem type of soil formation typical of deserts and introduced the term “sierozem.” Elaborating the ideas of V. V. Dokuchaev, Neustruev considered soils to be one of the elements of the geographic landscape. He indicated the connection between the relief and the soil cover and based on this principle made diagrams of the soil-geographic regionalization of the areas that he investigated. Neustruev was awarded the N. M. Przheval’skii Silver Medal and the P. P. Semenov Gold Medal.