Fedor Baranov

Fedor Ilyich Baranov (Russian: Фёдор Ильич Баранов) (1 April 1886 – 30 July 1965) was a founder of fisheries science, and has been called the "grandfather of fisheries population dynamics". He is best known for setting the foundations for quantitative fisheries science (including the Baranov catch equation) as well as for his contributions to development of fishing technology.

Life and career

Baranov graduated as a marine engineer from St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in 1909. Many of Baranov's peers felt that his theories were anti-Marxist, and he even risked being sent to a Gulag labor colony, only to be saved by N. N. Andreev, another fisheries technologist (and former student of Baranov

Scientific impact

The most famous work of Baranov is his paper from 1918, On the question of the biological basis of fisheries. In this paper, he presents the basic theory of fish population dynamics, including the famous catch equation. The paper has been translated to English at least three times, with some variations in the title: On the question of the biological foundations of fisheries, by the British Foreign Office in 1938, on the initiative of E. S. Russell, the then Director of the Lowestoft Laboratory. This is the translation known to Ray Beverton and Sidney Holt. This copy was passed to the California State Fisheries Laboratory in 1943. Translation by Milner Schaefer, date unknown. also translated to English many times.

According to Terrance Quinn, this equation is probably the most used in all of fisheries modeling.

Publications Baranov, F. I. 1914. The capture of fish by gillnets. Mater. Poznaniyu Russ. Rybolov. 3 (6): 56–99. (in Russian) Baranov, F. I. 1918. К вопросу о биологических основаниях рыбного хозяйства (K voprosu o biologicheskikh osnovaniyakh rybnogo khozyaistva - On the question of the biological basis of fisheries). Izvestiya otdela rybovodstva i nauchno-promyslovykh issledovanii 1 (1): 81–128. Baranov, F. I. 1925. К вопросу о динамике рыбного промысла (On the question of the dynamics of the fishing industry). Byulleten’ Rybnogo Khozyaistva, 8: 7–11. Baranov, F. I. 1976–1977. Selected works on fishing gear. Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem.