Alexei Vladimirovich Yablokov
Алексей Владимирович Яблоков
1933–2017
An ecologist who tracked Chernobyl’s long-term human costs
His Chernobyl study drew on more than 6,000 sources to estimate long-term harm, challenging accounts centered on the official death toll.
Alexei Yablokov was a Soviet and Russian biologist and environmental policy advocate whose work ranged from zoology and population biology to ecology. He became a prominent public voice on the long-term health and environmental consequences of Chernobyl, and the high mortality estimate in his co-authored study marked one end of the dispute over the disaster’s human toll. His career joined academic research to environmental activism, parliamentary work, and service as a presidential adviser, helping make ecological risk a matter of public policy.
Career timeline
- 1956Graduated from the biology and soil science faculty of Moscow State University
- 1966Earned a doctorate in biology and became a senior researcher at the Severtsov Institute of Animal Morphology
- 1969–1989Senior researcher and laboratory head at the Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology
- 1984Elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1988–1991Founder and co-chair of Greenpeace USSR
- 1989–1991People’s Deputy of the USSR and deputy chair of the Supreme Soviet ecology committee
- 1992–1997Russian presidential adviser on ecology and health, and chair of the interagency commission on environmental security
- 2007–2009Co-editor and co-author of Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment