Mikhail Ivanovich Sumgin

Sumgin, Mikhail Ivanovich 

Born Feb. 12 (24), 1873, in the village of Krapivka, in present-day Lukoianov Raion, Gorky Oblast; died Dec. 8, 1942, in Tashkent. Soviet scientist, one of the founders of geocryology.

From 1895 to 1899, Sumgin attended the University of St. Petersburg. He first studied the phenomenon of permafrost in 1911. In 1930 he helped organize the Commission for the Study of Permafrost of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; in 1939 he became deputy director of the academy’s Institute of Geocryology. Sumgin was the first scientist in the USSR to organize the existing data concerning the origin and spread of permafrost and to determine the tasks of geocryology as an independent branch of science (Permafrost in the USSR, 1927; 2nd ed., 1937—).

WORKS

Osnovaniia mekhaniki merzlykh gruntov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1937. (In collaboration with N. A. Tsytovich.)
Obshchee merzlotovedenie. Moscow-Leningrad, 1940. (In collaboration with others.)

REFERENCE

Kachurin, S. P., and V. K. Ianovskii. Mikhail Ivanovich Sumgin. Izv. AN SSSR: Seriia geograficheskaia, 1952, no. 6, pages 56–59.