Aleksandr Nikolaevich Golikov

Aleksandr Nikolayevich Golikov (29 December 1931 – 18 January 2010) was a Soviet and Russian malacologist and hydrobiologist. He was an expert in the taxonomy and ecology of molluscs and developed an original method for quantitatively surveying benthic fauna using lightweight diving equipment. He worked at the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now the Russian Academy of Sciences), where he headed the Laboratory of Marine Research from 1965 to 1992. He received a Doctor of Sciences degree in biological sciences in 1981 and became a professor in 1984.

Biography

Golikov was born in 1931 in Leningrad to physiologist and Leningrad State University lecturer Nikolai Vasilyevich Golikov (1905–1988) and Elena Aleksandrovna Golikova (née Kirchner; 1909–1942), who died during the Siege of Leningrad. In 1942, he was evacuated to Saratov with his father and elder sister Margarita. The family returned to Leningrad in spring 1944. Golikov graduated from secondary school No. 232 in 1950 and entered the biology and soil science faculty of Leningrad State University. During his school years he practiced boxing and became Leningrad junior champion in 1949–1950.

From his second year at the biology and soil science faculty, he specialized in the Department of Ichthyology and Hydrobiology. During the summers of 1953 and the winter of 1954, he undertook practical training at the Murmansk Biological Station in Dalnie Zelentsy, studying adaptations of gastropods of the intertidal zone of the Barents Sea. In summer 1954, he participated in an expedition of the Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography to the Norwegian Sea to study the Faroe–Shetland Channel. The material collected from the area formed the basis of his diploma thesis, which he defended in 1955; its subject was "Fauna of the southwestern coast of Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands".

The Department of Animal Physiology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Moscow State Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology is named after him.

Awards

Medal "In Commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of Leningrad" (1957) Medal "For Valiant Labour, in Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Lenin" (1970) Medal "For Labour Distinction" (1982)