Preobrazhenskii, Pavel Ivanovich

Preobrazhenskii, Pavel Ivanovich 

Born Jan. 1 (13), 1874, in what is now Kresttsy Raion, Novgorod Oblast; died Sept. 10, 1944, in Moscow. Soviet geologist and specialist in halurgy. Doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences (1935).

Preobrazhenskii graduated from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1900. He was a senior geologist for the Geological Committee from 1913 to 1918 and from 1924 to 1939, a professor at Perm’ University in 1923 and 1924, an associate at the Institute of Halurgy from 1939 until 1943, and the deputy director of the Institute of Mining and Chemical Raw Materials in 1943 and 1944.

Preobrazhenskii conducted geological studies in the Lena-Vitim and Baikal-Lena gold regions from 1901 to 1916. His chief work dealt with the study of salt deposits in the USSR. He discovered the world’s largest deposit of potassium and magnesium salts at Solikamsk in 1925 and the first deposit of petroleum in the Urals at Verkhnechusovskie Gorodki in 1929. A mineral from the hydrous borate group, Mg₃B₁₀O₁₈ · 4.5H₂0, has been named preobrazhenskite in his honor. Preobrazhenskii was awarded two orders.

WORKS

Solikamskoe kaliinoe mestorozhdenie. Leningrad, 1933.

REFERENCES

Dzens-Litovskii, A. I., P. M. Tatarinov, and Ia. S. Edel’shtein. “Pamiati prof. P. I. Preobrazhenskogo.” Priroda, 1946, no. 3.