Boris Borisovich
Polynov
1877-1952
Boris Borisovich Polynov was a scientist-soil scientist and geographer who laid the foundations of landscape geochemistry, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946). Boris Borisovich Polynov was born in Stavropol on August 4, 1877, in a family of lawyers. He graduated from Forestry Institute (1900) and St Petersburg University (1908), and studied mineralogy at the Universities of Munich (1906-1907) and Warsaw (1912). He was a professor at Don Polytechnic Institute in Novocherkassk (1920-1923) and at the Universities of Leningrad (1923-1947) and Moscow (1935-1936, 1947). For many years he worked at Soil Institute named after V.V. Gubkin. For many years he worked at Soil Institute named after V.V. Dokuchaev (in 1932-1937 – Director). B.B. Polynov conducted research in the Don and Volga regions, the Urals, the Caucasus and Mongolia. Polynov’s scientific research was highly appreciated by the Russian Geographical Society: in 1926 he was awarded the Great Gold Medal of the Departments of Ethnography and Statistics for his works on soil science, and in 1928 – the P.P. Semenov Gold Medal for a series of soil and geomorphological studies in the south of the USSR. B.B. Polynov developed the doctrine of weathering crust, laid the foundations of landscape geochemistry, formulated the law of spatial geochemical conjugation, proposed the ideas of series of water migration and biological absorption of chemical elements, introduced the concept of elementary landscapes. He proposed the concept of the critical level of groundwater depth, the idea of regional salt balances, a new classification of soils. During the Great Patriotic War Boris Borisovich replaced L.S. Berg, who was evacuated, as president of the Russian Geographical Society, conducted military-geographical research, headed the Military Geographical Commission of the Society. He was awarded the Order of Lenin (1947) and medals of the Russian Geographical Society – the Big Gold Medal (1926) and the P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky Gold Medal (1928). In memory of B.B. Polynov’s merits, a memorial plaque was erected on the building of Soil Institute named after V.V. Dokuchaev, where Boris Borisovich Polynov worked from 1927 to 1952.
Address: Moscow, Pyzhevsky lane, 7, p. 2
