Trofimuk, Andrei

Born Aug. 3 (16), 1911, in the village of Khvetkovich, in what is now Brest Oblast. Soviet petroleum geologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958; corresponding member, 1953). Hero of Socialist Labor (1944). Member of the CPSU since 1941.

After graduating from the University of Kazan in 1933, Trofi-muk obtained employment in the petroleum industry. In 1953 he became the deputy director, and in 1955 the director, of the All-Union Oil and Gas Scientific Research Institute. In 1957 he was made director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Trofimuk’s main works deal with the prospecting for and development of petroleum deposits. He took part in the discovery of the Volga-Ural Oil-Gas Region and helped develop methods of exploiting the region’s deposits; for these efforts he received the State Prize of the USSR in 1946 and 1950. Trofimuk devised a method of establishing the existence of oil-bearing strata and a volumetric-genetic method of estimating probable reserves of oil and gas. He established methods of oil and gas prospecting that are applicable to the conditions of Siberia and the Far East. In 1969 he collaborated in the discovery and verification of large deposits of gas in the solid, or gas-hydrate, state.

Trofimuk was a deputy to the sixth through eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. He has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and various medals.