Golden Names of Russia

By experts’ estimates, up to 35% of the total volume of oil is produced in the sea. And although the first project for the construction of oil platforms was proposed by a colleague of Robert Nobel back in 1896, the document merely lay on the shelf for more than 50 years.

What can be common between the Soviet scientist who founded the whole paleontological science of tafonomy and the legendary director George Lucas? Why do some critics accuse the American of plagiarism?

Rock salt deposits in the Bakhmut basin, huge reserves of coal in the Donetsk basin, the presence of a serious iron ore deposit in the center of European Russia. What helped the Russian scientist to foresee these and many other geological finds in Russia?

In 1912, an unexpected find was handed over to paleontologist Anatoly Ryabinin: a fossil bone that supposedly belonged to a dinosaur. This caused an ample resonance: no remains of the vertebrates of the Mesozoic era had ever been be found on the territory of Russia before the 20th century.

Vladimir Obruchev wrote his famous novel at the age of 61. Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vlady, Oleg Dal, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky fought for the right to shoot in its film adaptation, and only in the first year after release, more than 41 million people watched the film. The most amazing thing is that the author of the book was first of all not a fiction writer, but a world-famous geologist!

Geologist Larisa Popugayeva was not even 30 years old when she discovered the first kimberlite pipe in the USSR. This event gave rise to industrial diamond mining in the country, but the discoverer was stigmatized.

In 1908, a catastrophe occurred at the Rykovsky coal mines, which to this day remains the largest accident at coal mining enterprises in Russia. The manager of the mine did not deny his accountability for the deaths of 274 people. Why then was he punished only symbolically?

Next to nothing is known about the scientist who at the beginning of the 20th century founded geological exploration and petroleum geology in Russia. What is the reason for such a negligible attention of descendants in relation to the traveler and discoverer, whose research formed the basis for constructing a geological map of Russia? Was it his Polish origin or change of citizenship after the October Revolution?