Alexander Fersman

Alexander Evgenyevich Fersman (; 8 November 1883 – 20 May 1945) was a Russian and Soviet geochemist and mineralogist, and a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1919–1945).

Early life and education Fersman was born in St. Petersburg on 8 November 1883, to Evgeny Aleksandrovich Fersman, an architect and soldier, and Maria Eduardovna Kessler, a painter and pianist. He began exploring the countryside for minerals and collecting crystals while a young boy at his family's summer estate in Crimea. After graduating with honors from Odessa Classical Gymnasium in 1901, he attended the Mining Academy at Novorossisk, where he found the mineralogy courses so dull he attempted to switch his studies to Art History. Family friends persuaded him to take chemistry courses instead.

In 1903, the senior Fersman's duties as an officer in the army of the Tsar took the family to Moscow, where Alexander enrolled in the University of Moscow.

Career

In 1910, Fersman returned to Russia, where he began his administrative and teaching career. He became curator of mineralogy at the Russian Academy of Science's Mineralogical Museum in St. Petersburg, and the museum's director in 1919, following his election as an Academician. During World War I, Fersman formed a commission to advise the military on strategic matters involving geology, as he would do later in the Great Patriotic War. He also participated in an Academy of Science project to catalogue Russia's natural resources, and starting in 1915, travelled throughout Russia to assess mineral deposits. Lenin subsequently consulted Fersman for advice on exploiting the country's mineral resources.

During the Second World War, Fersman was responsible for the evacuation of some 80,000 of the Museum of Mineralogy's most valuable specimens from Moscow in 1941, and their return in 1944.

Fersman died on 20 May 1945, in the Black Sea town of Sochi, where he had gone to recover from exhaustion. He was 61.

Works

Fersman wrote more than 1,500 articles and publications on crystallography, mineralogy, geology, chemistry, geochemistry, geography, aerial photography, astronomy, philosophy, art, archeology, soil science, and biology. Among them were: Geochemistry in Russia (1922); Chemical Elements of the Earth and Cosmos (1923); Geochemistry, vols. I–IV (1933–1939); The Search for Mineral Deposits on the Basis of Geochemistry and Mineralogy (1939).

He was also a great popularizer of science in Russia. In addition to his contributions to Priroda and other journals, he wrote many books for general audiences, including: Three Years beyond the Arctic Circle (1924); Mineralogy for Everyone (1928, updated and re-published 1935); Twenty-Five Years of Soviet Natural Science (1944); Reminiscences about Minerals (1945); The March of Soviet Science (1945); Geochemistry for Everyone (pub. 1958)

Awards and honors Alexander Fersman was awarded the Lenin Prize (1929), USSR State Prize (1942), Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London (1943), and Order of the Red Banner of Labour. His name was given to the Fersman Mineralogical Museum, the minerals fersmite and fersmanite, a crater on the Moon, the research vessel RV Geolog Fersman, and streets in multiple Russian cities, including Moscow, Monchegorsk, and Apatity. Since 1946, the Soviet, and then Russian Academy of Sciences was giving the Fersman Award for outstanding research in geochemistry and mineralogy.