Sergei Zernov

Zernov, Sergei Alekseevich 

Born May 29 (June 10), 1871, in Moscow; died Feb. 22, 1945, in Leningrad. Soviet zoologist and hydrobiologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931). Member of the CPSU (1930).

Zernov was one of the founders of hydrobiology in Russia (especially of the ecological aspect of its study). He graduated from Moscow University in 1895. Between 1902 and 1914 he was director of the Sevastopol’ Biological Station of the Academy of Sciences. In 1914 he organized the first subdepartment of hydrobiology at the Moscow Agricultural Institute (now the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy) and in 1924, the first subdepartment of hydrobiology at Moscow State University. He was director of the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1931 to 1942. Between 1892 and 1901 he published his first works on plankton. In 1913 he published the monograph On the Problem of Investigating Aquatic Life in the Black Sea, in which he described in detail fauna and biocenoses of the Black Sea and their patterns of distribution. He discovered beds of phyllophora (red marine algae) in the northwestern part of the sea; this made possible the organized industrial production of iodine. In 1934 he published General Hydrobiology (reissued in 1949), the first original university course in the subject. Zernov was awarded the Order of Lenin.

REFERENCES

Pavlovskii, E. N., and L. S. Berg. “Akademik Sergei Alekseevich Zernov.” In Pamiati Akademika Sergeia Alekseevicha Zernov a. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.
Skadovskii, S. N. 5. A. Zernov. Moscow, 1957.