Gapeev, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich

Born Aug. 7 (19), 1881, in Kromy, in present-day Orel Oblast; died July 26, 1958, in Moscow. Soviet geologist; Honored Scientist and Technologist of the RSFSR (1933).

Gapeev graduated from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1910. He became a professor in 1920 and the director in 1923 of the Ural’sk Mining Institute; in 1926 he became a professor at the Moscow Mining Academy; he was a professor at the Moscow Mining Institute from 1930 to 1948 and at the Moscow Institute of Geological Prospecting from 1948 to 1954. His main work has been on industrial evaluation of the coal deposits in the USSR. He wrote works on the classification of coals and on the reserves of hard minerals. In 1948 he received the State Prize of the USSR for geological research that led to the discovery of new sectors of coking coal in the Karaganda coal region. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.