Zubov, Nikolai

Born May 11 (23), 1885, in Izmail; died Nov. 11, 1960, in Moscow. Soviet oceanographer and arctic explorer; doctor of geographical sciences (1937), professor (1930), and Honored Worker in Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1960). Engineer; rear admiral (1945).

Zubov was a graduate of a naval school (1904) and the Naval Academy (1910). He participated in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Zubov was the founder and head of the subdepartment of oceanography at the Moscow Hydro-meteorological Institute (1932-41), director of the Oceanographic Institute (1944–48), professor in the subdepartment of hydrology (1949–52), and founder of the subdepartment of oceanography of the department of geography of Moscow University (1953). In 1912 he made a hydrographic survey of the Mitiushikha inlet on the western shore of Novaia Zemlia. Twenty years later he directed the expedition of the ship N. Knipovich, which for the first time rounded Franz Josef Land from the north.

In 1935, Zubov served as director of the scientific unit of the first Soviet high-latitude expedition on the icebreaker Sadko. He was one of the first to introduce and work on the problem of ice forecasts in the arctic seas. He laid the foundations for theories of the vertical circulation of waters and the origin of a frigid intermediate stratum in the sea. He developed a method for computing the condensing of water upon mixing and formulated the law of the drift of ice along isobars. He was awarded two orders, as well as a number of medals. A bay in Antarctica has been named for him, as have two ships, the Nikolai Zubov and the Professor Zubov.