Ekaterina Radkevich

Born Nov. 29 (Dec. 12), 1908, in Kiev. Soviet geologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1970) and Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1940.

After graduating from the Middle Asian Geological Exploration Institute in Tashkent in 1931, Radkevich did geological work in Middle Asia in 1931–32. Between 1937 and 1959 she worked at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, now called the Institute of Geology of Ore Deposits, Petrography, Mineralogy, and Geochemistry. In 1959 she was appointed director of the Far East Geological Institute of the Siberian Department of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Vladivostok, subsequently renamed the Geological Institute of the Far East Scientific Center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Radkevich’s principal works are devoted to the study of ore deposits and metallogeny. She identified the general patterns of distribution of ore deposits within the Pacific ore belt and established the relationship between the region’s ores and the structure of the earth’s crust. She has also worked on the problem of relating the earth’s deep-seated shells to ore formation processes and to the planetary system of faults, whose stability contradicts, in Radkevich’s view, the concept of new global tectonics. Radkevich has been awarded two Orders of Lenin and various medals.