Gubkin Ivan Mikhaylovich (September 21, 1871, selo Pozdnyakovo, Murom Uyezd, Vladimir Governorate — 1939, Moscow) — a Soviet geologist, founder of Russian petroleum geology, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929) and Vice President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1936–1939). He was born on the territory of what is now Navashinsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region.[1]
Origins and education
He was born into a peasant family engaged in fishing on the Oka; the entire family — two sisters and two brothers — was illiterate. In 1883 he graduated from the Pozdnyakovo village parish school, then from the Murom uyezd school, and in 1890 from the Kirzhach Teachers' Seminary. He worked for several years as a village teacher in Murom Uyezd, after which in 1895 he entered the Saint Petersburg Teachers' Institute and taught at a city school in Saint Petersburg. In 1896–1898 he took part in the activities of the "League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class." From 1903 to 1910 he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, graduating with distinction at the age of forty.[1]
Scientific and government work
Gubkin began his first research on petroleum geology in 1908 in the Kuban, in the Neftyano-Shirvansky area; his publications on that region appeared in 1912–1913 in the "Proceedings of the Geological Committee" and were translated into English. After graduating from the Mining Institute he worked at the Geological Committee; in 1917–1918 he was sent on assignment to the USA to study the petroleum industry.[1]
From 1918 he worked in the Moscow Department of the Geological Committee, and at the suggestion of V. I. Lenin he joined the Main Petroleum Committee. In 1919–1924 he headed the Main Shale Committee and the Board of the Shale Industry. In 1920 he founded the journal "Petroleum and Shale Economy" (from 1925, "Petroleum Economy") and remained its permanent editor. In 1920–1925 he led the Special Commission for the Study of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly.[1]
From 1920 he was a professor, in 1922–1930 rector of the Moscow Mining Academy, and from 1930 rector and head of the Department of Geology and Oil Fields at the Moscow Petroleum Institute. In 1924, on Gubkin's initiative, the State Petroleum Research Institute was founded (reorganized in 1934 into the Institute of Fossil Fuels of the USSR Academy of Sciences); in 1925 a laboratory of geophysical exploration methods was established there. In 1930–1936 he was chairman of the Council for the Study of Productive Forces of the USSR Academy of Sciences; he successively headed the All-Union Geological Prospecting Association, the Main Geological and Hydrogeodetic Directorate, and the Main Geological Directorate of the USSR People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. From 1937 he was chairman of the Azerbaijan Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1939 chairman of the Committee for Geology under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.[1]
His principal scientific works are devoted to petroleum geology: Gubkin studied the genesis and formation conditions of oil fields in the North Caucasus, created the theory of mud volcanoes, and established their connection with oil fields.[1]
Nizhny Novgorod connection
Ivan Mikhaylovich Gubkin was born in the selo of Pozdnyakovo in Murom Uyezd, Vladimir Governorate, now part of Navashinsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region. It was there that he received his primary education at the Pozdnyakovo village parish school.[1]
Sources
- virtmus.arran.ru — Gubkin Ivan Mikhaylovich — Virtual Museum of the History of the Russian Academy of Sciences