Tikhonovich, Nikolai Nikolaevich

He was born on January 8 ( 20 ), 1872 .

In 1892 he graduated from the 1st Kharkov gymnasium . In 1891 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Kharkov University , a year later he moved to the natural department. He chose geology as a specialty. In 1896, after graduation, he studied for two years at Moscow University with V.I. Vernadsky .

Since 1898, N. N. Tikhonovich conducted hydrogeological studies in the Semipalatinsk and Turgai regions.

Since 1904, an employee of the Geological Committee of Russia ^[1] .

In 1907, N. N. Tikhonovich completed an internship at the University of Geneva.

From 1908 to 1910 he conducted field geological studies of work on Sakhalin in order to ascertain the conditions of oil occurrence and assess their industrial prospects. At the same time, he studied the manifestations and deposits of coal and gold. As a result, the stratigraphy and distribution of tertiary deposits of the region were elucidated. The identification of the oil-bearing region on the eastern coast of the island led to the conclusion that “the presence of oil on Sakhalin is a very serious fact that deserves the attention of industrialists and under certain conditions can have a major impact on the entire economic life of the Far East” (Tikhonovich, Polevoy, 1910, p. 730). During his work on Sakhalin, N. N. Tikhonovich traveled to Japan, studied at the Geological and Zoological Museums, studied the modern and tertiary fauna of the sea and the Japanese islands. He established the identity between the sections of the Miocene deposits of Sakhalin with the Japanese sections and established the marine Miocene in Japan (Tikhonovich, 1910).

In the years 1914-1918. NN Tikhonovich worked in the Ural-Embensky oil-bearing region. He identified the “secondary” manifestations of oil in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits at the Makat field, noted the role of clay layers as impermeable layers for oil, and confidently ranked the Jurassic system deposits as an oil and gas formation (Tikhonovich, 1915). N. N. Tikhonovich gave concrete recommendations for conducting oil exploration and concluded: “There is every reason to consider the Ural region to be of serious industrial importance” (Tikhonovich, 1919, p. 139). Continuing the study of oil deposits in the Kazan province, N. N. Tikhonovich came to the conclusion about the "need for a serious and systematic formulation of the study and exploration of oil and tar deposits in the Perm deposits of the eastern part of European Russia" (Tikhonovich, 1920, p. 50.).

During the Civil War in Russia 1917-1922 / 1923. the specialists of the Geological Committee who worked in Siberia were cut off by the Czechoslovak rebellion from the Center, and N. N. Tikhonovich lived in Tomsk.

In 1919, he investigated the manifestations of copper ores and coal in the Semipalatinsk and Akmola regions and revealed a large high-quality brown coal area in the Bayan Aul region (Tikhonovich, 1932a).

From 1923 to 1925, N. N. Tikhonovich led the work of geological and exploration parties of the Moscow Mining Academy in the Caucasus and conducted research in the Gudermes, Bragun and Benoisk districts of the Grozny district. Individual areas were studied in great detail in order to resolve the issue of their prospects for oil. According to the results of the work, N. N. Tikhonovich recommended the Grozneft trust to drill a deep exploration well in one of the sections of the Gudermes ridge in order to search for oil deposits supposed here (Tikhonovich, 1926). But a large Gudermes gas and oil field was discovered in this area only ten years later (Gasanguseynov et al., 1987, p. 14). NN Tikhonovich combined practical research with organizational work.

In 1920, he was appointed chairman of the Industrial Intelligence Committee at the Mining Department of the Supreme Economic Council and in 1921 he organized a number of branches of Centerpromrazvedka in the regions. As a result, the industrial significance of Tikhvin bauxites was established, on the basis of which the aluminum industry of the USSR began to be created; mining of the first radium in Tyuy-muyun began; Coal and platinum are discovered in the Norilsk district; the question was raised about the exploration of potash salts in the Solikamsk region (Tikhonovich, 1932a). Meetings and congresses, organized with the direct participation of N. N. Tikhonovich, played an important role in the reorganization of geological exploration on a planned socialist basis and providing it with a scientific research base in the form of new industry institutes (Tikhonovich, 1925; First All-Union ..., 1927).

Arrest and links

In 1926, N. N. Tikhonovich was appointed assistant director of the Geological Committee D. I. Mushketov and led the exploration of mineral resources in the USSR. Then at the Geolcom was created the Commission on mineral reserves and the Accounting and Economic Department under the leadership of N. N. Tikhonovich, which concentrated data on minerals of the USSR. Annual reviews of the country's mineral resources were published annually in the open press. In the late 1920s, these publications were blamed on N.N. Tikhonovich and his associates as a deliberate disclosure of state secrets and espionage (Zablotsky, 1999).

In October 1928, N. N. Tikhonovich was arrested. During the investigation, he was asked to head the geological part of the expedition to Ukhta, conceived back in 1921 by V.I. Lenin as a camp for exile of the then arrested participants of the Kronstadt uprising. The project of the Ukhta expedition of the OGPU N.N. Tikhonovich was in the chamber of the Butyrka prison (Tikhonovich, 1932b). The work of a team of geologists led by N. N. Tikhonovich in the Ukhta expedition (Ukhtpechlag) is a period of systematic large-scale and highly effective research. In the very first years of the work, general ideas about the Timan and Pritimanie section from Riphean shales up to the Cenozoic were obtained, a stratigraphy of the Paleozoic and, first of all, Devonian deposits of the Timan was developed (Tikhonovich, 1930).

In January 1933, in the village of Chibyu, a meeting of the Commission of the Natural Resources Sector of the USSR Gosplan took place. The work of geologists of the Ukhto-Pechora Trust and the report of N. N. Tikhonovich were highly appreciated (Tikhonovich, 1933).

In 1937, under guard, he was a delegate to the 17th session of the International Geological Congress in Moscow ^[2] .

By the end of the 1930s, a geological map and a tectonics diagram of the Timan-Ural region with a scale of 1: 1 000 000 were compiled. Oil, coal, asphaltites, building materials deposits were studied, their assessment was given and commercial operation began.

The last years of life

In 1939, after a 10-year term of imprisonment and attachment to the GULAG camp system, NN Tikhonovich returned to Moscow and was hired by the Moscow Exploration Trust (later the Moscow branch of VNIGRI). He prepared a series of generalizing publications on the geology of the Timan-Ural region (Tikhonovich, 1941 and others) and on the Devonian deposits of the Russian platform and the Urals (Tikhonovich, 1951).

In the last years of his life, N. N. Tikhonovich led a team of geologists studying the deep tectonics of the Russian platform, and taught the course “Geotectonics” at the Moscow Petroleum Institute.

In 1943, N. N. Tikhonovich was awarded the degree of Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences

N.N. Tikhonovich died on June 17, 1952 in Moscow. He was buried at Vvedensky cemetery .

One of the streets of the city of Ukhta in the Komi Republic , named after N. N. Tikhonovich.

• 1947 - Honored Scientist of the RSFSR
• 1949 - Order of the Red Banner of Labor

• Shakhty affair
• Geolcom case

• Galkin A.I., Evdoshenko Yu.V. Geologist N.N. Tikhonovich - known and unfamiliar. To the 140th birthday // Veterans: from the history of the development of the oil and gas industry. Vol. 27. M: Publishing house "Oil industry", 2014. S. 33-74.
• Garaevskaya I. A. Outstanding scientists of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas named after I. M. Gubkina, Issue 69, Professor Tikhonovich Nikolai Nikolaevich. 2009.
• Geologist N. N. Tikhonovich - known and unfamiliar : On the 140th anniversary of his birth // Veterans: from the history of the development of the oil and gas industry. Vol. 27. M: Publishing house "Oil industry", 2014. S. 33-74.
• Portrait Gallery of the Russian State Oil and Gas University named after I.M. Gubkin, 2001.
• Professionals in the oil and gas industry. Book 3. M .: Publishing house "Oil industry", 2005.

• Biography and bibliography of N. N. Tikhonovich in the Information System " History of Geology and Mining ".