Beliankin, Dmitrii

Beliankin, Dmitrii Stepanovich 

Born Aug. 11 (23), 1876, in the village of Lamanikha, Vologda Province; died June 20, 1953, in Moscow. Soviet geologist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR) from 1943, and corresponding member from 1933.

Beliankin graduated from the University of Iur’ev (1901). Beginning in 1920 he was a professor at Petrograd (Leningrad) Polytechnic Institute. Beginning in 1930 he worked at the Petrographic Institute, and later at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the AN SSSR. In 1949 he became academician secretary of the Division of Geological and Geographical Sciences of the AN SSSR. He was a member of the main editorial board of the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

Beliankin’s principal work was devoted to questions of general, theoretical, and technical petrography, as well as to mineralogy. He carried on geological petrographic research in the Urals, the Caucasus, and the northern European part of the USSR. His investigations of the Il’men Mountains have particular significance. In the Caucasus he was the first to find and study the young intrusive rocks (so-called neointrusions) with which ore deposits are associated. He pointed out the facial differences between these intrusions and ancient ones of similar composition.

Beliankin believed that the diversity of types of mountain rocks depended on the contact interaction of the intruding magma and the rocks into which it intrudes. Beliankin studied rock-forming minerals that are of theoretical and practical significance, rare minerals (wischnewite, hy-drogarnets, and narsarsukites), and also “industrial rocks” (fireproof materials, ceramic articles, slags, abrasives, glass, and others). Beliankin laid the foundation of industrial petrography, which plays a role in silicate technology that is similar to the role of the study of metals in metallurgy. The mineral beliankinite was named after him. He was awarded the A. P. Karpinskii Prize (1949). Beliankin was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.

WORKS

Petrografiia tekhnicheskogo kamnia. Moscow, 1952. (Coauthor.)
Izbrannye trudy, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1956–1958.

REFERENCE

Voprosy petrografii i mineralogii: (Sb. statei, posviashchennykh pamiati D. S. Beliankina), vols. 1–2, Moscow, 1953.