Boris Nikolayevich Gorodkov (February 3, 1890, Tobolsk - May 25, 1953, Pushkin, Leningrad Region, USSR) - geobotanist , soil scientist , geographer, explorer of tundra and Arctic deserts , traveler.
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Author of a number of botanical taxa . In the botanical ( binary ) nomenclature, these names are supplemented by the abbreviation " Gorodkov " . List of such taxa on the IPNI website Personal page on IPNI website |
He made 26 research expeditions in Siberia , the Far East , the European North of the USSR, the Polar Urals . Based on the materials of the expeditions, he compiled the first reliable maps of the Gydan and Taz Peninsulas .
The author of more than 100 scientific works, in which he determined the type of tundra vegetation, first made geobotanical zoning of the tundra zone. He laid the foundations of tundra studies, initiated the creation of the Institute of Reindeer Herding of the VASKHNIL .
Content
Biography
He was born in the family of a teacher of literature history at the Tobolsk Theological College Nikolai Aleksandrovich Gorodkov and native Siberian Vera Aleksandrovna Gorodkova. The family had two more younger sons and a daughter. He studied at the gymnasium, the graduate of which was the great D.I. Mendeleev. During his studies, Gorodkov became interested in entomology, botany, biology, chemistry. He graduated from high school with a silver medal and in 1908 entered the chemical department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. Then he entered the biological department of St. Petersburg University. As a student, he participated in expeditions of 1911-1914. on the Tobolsk lips. (basins of the Konda, Vakha, Poluy rivers).
After graduation, he devoted himself to the study of vegetation in the Arctic. During the Civil War, he worked at Tomsk University and the Omsk Agricultural Institute .
From 1920 to the end. life worked at the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences. In 1923-1924 led an expedition to study the Pur river basin and the Ob-Pur watershed. For these studies, the All-Union Geographical Society awarded Gorodkov the medal of N. M. Przhevalsky. In the years 1924-1926. explored the North and Polar Urals. In the years 1927-1928. led a comprehensive expedition to the Gydan tundra, based on the materials of which he compiled the first reliable maps of the Gydan and Taz Peninsulas. In 1930 he conducted geobotanical surveys of the Murmansk coast, in 1937 - in the Khibiny.
In 1930, at the Faculty of Biology, Leningrad University, he began to teach the course “Tundra Studies”. Since 1932 he headed the department of geobotany and feed at the Institute for Reindeer Herding VASKHNIL, created on his initiative. Having set the task to go around all the tundras of the country, he studied them in the lower reaches of the Lena (1935), the Ore Altai and the Pamirs (1936), in the Penzhina basin, in Chukotka, Wrangel Island (1938).
During the war, Gorodkov continued his scientific and pedagogical activities in besieged Leningrad. In January 1943, two weeks before the breaking of the blockade, Gorodkov was taken by plane to Moscow, recognizing his state of health as hopeless. The scientist survived and in 1944 returned to Leningrad to work. In 1946, he organized an expedition to the west coast of Taimyr along the route from Dikson to Lower Taimyr. In 1947, together with E. S. Korotkevich, he visited the New Siberian Islands in order to study their vegetation. In 1948 he made a large-scale trip to Cape Chelyuskin, Dixon Islands, the October Revolution, Domashny, Wiese, Franz Josef Land, Nordenskjöld, Lomonosov Bay in Taimyr.
In 1949 he went on an expedition to the Pechora region and the surroundings of Salekhard to study the influence of human activity in the economic development of the North on changes in its nature. This was his last expedition. Since 1950, for health reasons, Gorodkov was forced to abandon pedagogical activity, but continued his scientific activity until the last days. He was elected an honorary member of the All-Union Botanical Society, headed the biogeography section and was a member of the scientific council of the All-Union Geographical Society.
He died at his dacha in Pushkin, was buried at the Bolsheokhtinsky cemetery.
Memory
The cape in the west of Fr. Grills in the Franz Josef Land archipelago, a river in Taimyr that flows into Thaddea Bay, one of the mountain peaks and a glacier in the Polar Urals, as well as 5 new plant species.
Rewards
- Order of Lenin (1953)
- Order of the Red Banner of Labor (06/10/1945)
List of
- Vegetation of the tundra zone of the USSR
- Vegetation of the Arctic and mountain tundra of the USSR
The Importance of Research and Research
First made geobotanical zoning of the tundra zone, ecological analysis of the landscape, gave an assessment of deer pastures and farmland. He gave a definition of the type of tundra vegetation and revealed the diverse relationships between permafrost and soil and vegetation cover, which made it possible to solve some issues of thermal reclamation in the North. During research of the Polar Urals, he became involved in clarifying the geographical discovery - the highest point of the Polar Urals of Mount Narodnaya.
Literature
- Kozin V.V. To the headwaters of unknown rivers: Life and travels of B. N. Gorodkov. - M .: Thought , 1981. - 120 p. - ( Wonderful geographers and travelers ). - 100,000 copies.