Irina Zarutskaya

Irina Pavlovna Zarutskaya (born 12 November 1908 in Moscow; died 2 February 1990 in Moscow) was a Soviet geomorphologist, cartographer and university professor. Most notably, she was editor-in-chief of the map production department during the creation of the 1:2,500,000 scale Hypsometric Map of the USSR.

Biography Zarutskaya was the daughter of the architect . At 17 she entered Moscow State University (MGU) in the Department of Soil Science, Geology and Geography of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. She graduated as a geomorphologist in 1931.

After her graduation, Zarutskaya carried out topographical fieldwork in the Moscow Oblast and Belgorod Oblast, the southern Ural Mountains, Siberia, the Far East and other regions of the USSR. For the construction of the Moskva-Volga Canal, she topographically surveyed the Moskva River drainage basin in 1932. From 1934 to 1937 she worked in the scientific editorial office of the cartography trust of the Geodesy Main Administration. Beginning in 1951, she created a series of maps for secondary schools. She worked together with Konstantin Alekseevich Salishchev.

In 1955 she successfully defended her advanced degree in geographical sciences with her thesis titled, Methods of compiling relief on hypsometric maps. In 1966 she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, Thematic maps of nature, and earned her doctorate in geographical sciences in 1967.

She died on 2 February 1990 in Moscow.

Honors She won a variety of honors during her lifetime. Medal "For the defense of Moscow" Medal "For heroic work in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" Stalin Prize II class (100,000 rubles) in the field of geological-geographical sciences (1951) with the collective for the scientific work on the creation of the hypsometric map of the USSR at a scale of 1:2,250,000 (1950) Order of the Red Banner of Labor (twice) Decoration of Honor of the Soviet Union