The institutional architect of Soviet geology who spanned desert and Precambrian
The car he was travelling in on a scientific mission to Algeria collided with a camel. The geologist who had studied deserts and drilled kilometres into the earth was killed by an animal on the road.
Alexander Sidorenko served as USSR Minister of Geology for thirteen years (1962–1975), directing mineral exploration across Western Siberia, Yakutia, and Central Asia, before becoming Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences and overseeing the entire Soviet earth-science establishment. Beginning with the study of desert weathering in Central Asia, he pioneered Precambrian sedimentary-metamorphic lithology (the reconstruction of original sedimentary environments from metamorphosed rocks) and won the 1966 Lenin Prize for discovering the Kovdor phlogopite deposit. On his initiative, the Kola Superdeep Borehole was launched as a landmark project in crustal research. A Stalingrad veteran who was seriously wounded in battle, he died in a car crash with a camel during a scientific mission to Algeria.
Career Timeline
- 1940–1941Assistant and graduate student, Mineralogy Department, Voronezh University
- 1941–1943Red Army platoon and battery commander; fought at Stalingrad, seriously wounded
- 1943–1950Geological Institute, Turkmen Branch, USSR Academy of Sciences: senior researcher → department head
- 1950–1961Kola Branch, USSR Academy of Sciences: deputy chairman → Presidium chairman, concurrently director of Geological Institute
- 1961–1962First Deputy Chairman, State Committee for Coordination of Scientific Research, RSFSR Council of Ministers
- 1962–1975USSR Minister of Geology and Mineral Protection → Chairman of State Geological Committee → Minister of Geology
- 1975–1982Vice-President, USSR Academy of Sciences, and Chairman of the Earth Sciences Section
- 1979–1982Founding Director, Institute of the Lithosphere, USSR Academy of Sciences