Boris Konstantinovich Shishkin

Born Apr. 7 (19), 1886, in Kukarka, now Sovetsk, Kirov Oblast; died Mar. 21, 1963, in Leningrad. Soviet botanist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (from 1943).

Shishkin graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Tomsk in 1911; he taught there from 1913 to 1915. From 1915 to 1918 he was a military doctor, and from 1918 and 1925 he was the director of the botany department of the Museum of the Caucasus. Between 1925 and 1930 he was a professor at the University of Tomsk. In 1930, Shishkin joined the staff of the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, serving as its director between 1938 and 1949. From 1945 to 1958 he was a professor at the University of Leningrad. Between 1946 and 1963 he was the vice-president of the All-Union Botanical Society.

Shishkin’s main works deal with the taxonomy of flowering plants (including Caryophyllaceae, Umbelliferae, and Composi-tae) and botanical geography (Siberia, Transcaucasia). He was the organizer and editor of many collective works, for example, The Flora of the USSR, The Flora of the Byelorussian SSR, The Flora of Leningrad Oblast, and The Flora of Turkmenia. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1952, Shishkin was also awarded the Order of Lenin and two other orders.