Dimitri Nalivkin

Who was Dimitri Nalivkin?

Dimitri Vasilievich Nalivkin was an geologist from the Soviet Union. He was primarily interested in stratigraphy, but was also responsible in large part for mapping the geology of the USSR.

The son of a mining engineer, Nalivkin was born in St. Petersburg, and followed his father's footsteps by entering the local Mining Academy in 1907. During his training he began teaching there, and also became involved in fieldwork expeditions in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Early work dealt with Devonian brachiopods in the Kyrgyzstan portion of the Fergana Valley, and he retained an interest in this geological period throughout his career.

In 1917 he was elected to the Geological Commission of Russia, and remained with it for more sixty years. During his tenure with the Commission he was responsible for directing research into palaeontology, sedimentology and stratigraphy, work which led to the development and extraction of resources such as coal, ores and petroleum.

His most significant contribution came with the creation of the index geological maps of the USSR, which attracted considerable international attention. With the completion of his Geological Map of the USSR he was awarded the prestigious Lenin Prize in 1957.