Cherskii, Nikolai

Cherskii, Nikolai Vasil’evich 

Born Jan. 20 (Feb. 2), 1905, in the settlement of Ol’ga, in what is now Primor’e Krai. Soviet scientist; specialist in mechanics and the development of petroleum and gas deposits. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968); Hero of Socialist Labor (1975). Member of the CPSU since 1942.

Cherskii graduated from the Institute of Water Transport Engineers in Vladivostok in 1931 and from the Academy of the Petroleum Industry in 1951. He became chairman of the Presidium of the Yakutsk Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1964 and has also served as the director of the Institute of Physical and Technical Problems of the North since 1973. Cherskii’s chief works deal with the designs of gas wells, the development of methods for calculating the reserves of natural gas deposits and for exploiting gas hydrate deposits, and container-pipeline transportation. He was the codiscoverer of the property of natural gas of forming deposits in the crust in the form of a solid gas hydrate. Cherskii was a deputy to the seventh through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, five other orders, and various medals.