Varsanofeva, Vera Aleksandrovna

Varsanof’eva, Vera Aleksandrovna 

Born July 10 (22), 1890, in Moscow. Soviet geologist; first woman in the Soviet Union to receive the degree of doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences (1935). A pupil of A. P. Pavlov. Corresponding member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (1945).

From 1925 to 1929, Varsanof eva was a professor at the Second Moscow University, and from 1930, at the V. I. Lenin Moscow Pedagogical Institute. She was also vice-president of the Moscow Society of Naturalists (1942). Varsanof eva studied the stratigraphy of the Paleozoic deposits of the upper Pechora basin and the geomorphology of the northern Urals and did the first analysis of the development of the relief of the northern Urals. She is also well-known for works on the history of geological science, the history of the teaching of geological disciplines in Russia, and the popularization of geological knowledge. The entirety of her geological work merited the A. P. Karpinskii gold medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1950). She was awarded the Order of Lenin and other orders and medals. One of the peaks of the Polar Urals is named after Varsanof eva.

WORKS

Proiskhozhdenie i stroenie Zemli. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945.
A. P. Pavlov i ego rol’ v razvitii geologii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1947.
Ural’skaia gornaia oblast’, khrebet Pai-Khoi i Pechorskaia nizmennost’. In Geologiia SSSR, vol. 2, part 1. Moscow, 1963.

REFERENCES

Bogdanov, A. A. [and others]. “Kiubileiu V. A. Varsanof evoi.” Biulleten’ Moskovskogo obshchestva ispytatelei prirody: Otd. geologii, 1970, vol. 45, issue 4.
Ianshin, A. L. V. A. Varsanof’ eva, ibid.