Solntsev, Nikolai AdolFovich

(real surname Soln-tsev-El’be). Born Feb. 8 (21), 1902, in the station of Jevje, now the city of Vevis, Trakai Raion, Lithuanian SSR. Soviet physical geographer; one of the founders of the regional school of Soviet landscape science. Doctor of geographic sciences (1964).

Solntsev became a professor of the department of geography of Moscow University in 1965. He did most of his research in the arctic, including Kolguev Island, Novaia Zemlia, the Kara Sea, and the Kola Peninsula, and in the European part of the USSR—mainly the central regions. He studied the morphology and dynamics of landscapes and their constituent parts (for example, natural boundaries), the role that firn fields play in relief formation, the history of physical geography and landscape science, and problems of physicogeographical regionalization. An inlet on the eastern coast of Novaia Zemlia has been named in honor of Solntsev.