Alexander Evgenievich Fersman

About museum

Alexander Evgenievich Fersman – a Russian and Soviet mineralogist, crystallographer, geochemist, professor, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Vice‑President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was born on October 27 (November 8), 1883 in Saint Petersburg. From the age of six he became interested in mineralogy in the laboratory of his uncle – the chemist and professor A. E. Kessler.

 In 1909 he began working as an unpaid assistant at the Mineralogical Cabinet of the Imperial Moscow University. He studied minerals and gemstones. In 1912 he became a professor at Moscow University, where he lectured the world’s first course in geochemistry. Later, at the invitation of V. I. Vernadsky, he moved to Petersburg. In 1919 he became an academician, one of the youngest full members of the Russian Academy of Sciences at that time. In 1924–1927 he was elected a member of the Presidium and academic secretary of the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and in 1927–1929 he served as Vice‑President of the Academy.

  He organized comprehensive geological expeditions. A. E. Fersman’s expeditions discovered the Monchegorsk copper‑nickel deposit, the Khibiny apatite deposits, and sulfur deposits in Central Asia. Alexander Evgenievich Fersman passed away on May 20, 1945 in Sochi and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.