Zemiatchenskii, Petr

Born Nov. 14 (26), 1856, in the village of Lipovka, in present-day Tambov Oblast; died Feb. 27, 1942, in Leningrad. Soviet geologist and soil scientist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1928), Student and collaborator of V. V. Dokuchaev.

Zemiatchenskii graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1882. He became a professor and head of the subdepartment of mineralogy and crystallography at St. Petersburg University in 1898. He organized and directed (1919–27) the country’s first State Research Institute of Ceramics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Leningrad). From 1926 to 1934 he was a researcher in the Soil Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he founded a mineralogy laboratory. From 1930 to 1942 he was chairman of the subdepartment of soil mechanics at Leningrad University. His main research was in mineralogy, petrography, crystallography, and soil mechanics. Zemiatchenskii created a new branch of mineralogy, clay science. He was one of the founders of soil mechanics as a branch of soil science as applied to road building and civil engineering. He received the M. P. Akhmatov Prize (1914) for Studies on Crystal Formation, which was published from 1909 to 1914.