Epaminond Epaminondovich Fotiadi

Fotiadi, Epaminond Epaminondovich 

Born Jan. 10 (23), 1907, in St. Petersburg. Soviet geologist and geophysicist; founder of Soviet petroleum geophysics. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958). Member of the CPSU since 1945.

Fotiadi graduated from Leningrad State University in 1933. From 1927 to 1939 he worked in the Embaneft’ trust. Beginning in 1946, he worked at the Scientific Research Institute of Applied Geophysics, and from 1948 to 1951 he headed the institute’s Tui-mazy expedition. In 1951 he began working at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Geophysical Prospecting Methods, and in 1958, at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1965 to 1970 he was also director of the Siberian Scientific Research Institute of Geology, Geophysics, and Mineral Raw Materials of the Ministry of Geology of the USSR. Fotiadi has been a professor at the University of Novosibirsk since 1962.

Fotiadi’s major works are devoted to the geophysical methods of prospecting for petroleum deposits and to the study of the earth’s crust and upper mantle. Fotiadi made a major contribution to the methods of geological evaluation of geophysical data, on the basis of which he compiled a series of maps and models of the buried folded foundation of ancient and recent platforms. He generalized the geophysical data for the southern part of what was then Emba Oblast (1927–4–0), the Volga and Second Baku regions (1944–57), and a number of regions in Siberia and the Far East.

Fotiadi has been awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.