Efremov, Ivan Antonovich

Born Apr. 9 (22), 1907, in the village of Vyritsa in what is now Leningrad Oblast; died May 10, 1972, in Moscow. Soviet Russian writer and paleontologist. Doctor of biological sciences (1940).

In 1935, Efremov graduated from the geological survey department of the Leningrad Institute of Mines. In 1929 he began working as a research associate at the Museum of Geology. From 1937 to 1959 he was head of the lower vertebrate laboratories of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He also led a number of expeditions, including one to the Gobi Desert. Efremov is the founder of taphonomy, the division of paleontology concerned with regularities in the formation of sites of fossil remains. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1952 for his work Taphonomy and the Geological Record (1950).

Efremov is the author of the collections of science-fiction and adventure novellas Meeting Over Tuscarora (1944) and The White Antler (1945). He also wrote the historical novellas On the Edge of Ecu me ne (1949) and Baurdzhed’s Journey (1953). His science fiction and social-philosophical novel The Andromeda Nebula (1957) is the first attempt in Soviet literature to paint a comprehensive picture of the life of a highly developed communist society. Efremov also wrote the literary-documentary book The Way of the Winds (1956) and the adventure novel The Razor’s Edge (1963). In 1969, his novel The Hour of the Bull was published. Efremov’s works have been translated into foreign languages. He has been awarded four orders, as well as several medals.