Nicolai Ivanovich Andrusov

Who was Nicolai Ivanovich Andrusov?

Nicolai Ivanovich Andrusov was a Russian geologist, stratigrapher, and palaeontologist.

He was born in Odessa, then a part of Russia. He studied geology and zoology at the Novorossia University in Odessa. He then traveled across Russia and central Europe to collect fossil specimens.

The Challenger expedition of 1872–1876 studied processes of the sea floor. In 1889 Andrusov published a review of this expedition in the Mining Journal. He would later perform studies of the geology and sediments of the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea.

In 1890-91 he participated in a deep water expedition to the Black Sea by the Russian Geographical Society. This expedition discovered hydrogen sulfide in the lower portions of this lake. Andrusov was the first to propose that this substance was created by biological decomposition of life forms containing sulfurous compounds.

He was married to Nadezhda Genrikhovna Schliemann in 1899, the daughter of the somewhat notorious archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. In 1905 he became a professor at the University of Kiev. In 1914 he became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He emigrated to France in 1920 due to illness.