Dmitrii Sergeevich Korzhinskii

Born Sept. 1 (13), 1899, in St. Petersburg. Soviet geologist; specialist in the petrography, geochemistry, and geology of ore deposits. One of the founders of physicochemical petrology and mineralogy and also of physical geochemistry. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953; corresponding member, 1943). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). The son of S. I. Korzhinskii.

Upon graduation from the Leningrad Mining Institute in 1926, Korzhinskii worked on the Geological Committee, and then at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Geology (VSEGEI). Between 1929 and 1940 he taught at the Leningrad Mining Institute (becoming a professor in 1940). In 1937 he began to work at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. (He has been director of the Institute of Experimental Mineralogy since 1969.) He studied the geology and mineral deposits of Kazakh-stan, Eastern Siberia, the Urals, and Middle Asia. He developed the fundamentals of the physicochemical theory of mineralization processes: the thermodynamic theory of natural mineral systems with completely mobile components, the physicochemical analysis of the parageneses of minerals, and the theory of metasomatic zonation. Korzhinskii proposed a theory of bimetasomatic and contact-infiltration skarn formation and the acid-base hydrothermal evolution of solutions. He substantiated the principle of acid-base interaction during the crystallization of melts.

Korzhinskii is a member of many foreign societies and academies. Since 1969 he has been chairman of the National Committee of Geologists of the USSR. He has been vice-president of the All-Union Mineralogical Society since 1964. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1946, the Lenin Prize in 1958, the A. P. Karpinskii Prize in 1949, and the V. I. Vernadskii Gold Medal in 1972. He has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals. The mineral korzhinskite has been named after Korzhinskii.