Fersman Alexander Evgenievich 
(27.10.(08.11).1883–20.05.1945)

An outstanding geochemist and mineralogist, academician of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences. 
Born in St. Petersburg in the family of the general artillery. My father studied at the Academy of the General Staff, after which he was assigned first to the Crimea, and then military attaché to Greece. In the Crimea, at the age of six, the boy became interested in collecting stones. Having learned that a strong department of geology was established at Moscow University, Fersman went to Moscow, entered the university, and graduated in 1907. After graduation, he worked for two years in Paris at the French mineralogist A. Lacroix and in Heidelberg in the laboratory of the Norwegian geochemist V.M. Goldschmidt. 
Since 1909, he began his teaching activities, first in his native university, and since 1910 in the national University. Shanyavsky, where he was given the first course of geochemistry. Since 1912, Fersman became a professor of mineralogy at the Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) courses in St. Petersburg, combining this work with the duties of the senior curator of the Mineralogical Museum of the Academy of Sciences, and later its director (1919–1930). 
In 1912 Fersman became one of the organizers and editors of the journal Nature. In 1915, on his initiative, a Commission for Raw Materials and Chemical Materials was organized under the Committee of Military Technical Assistance, which he headed; at the same time being the secretary of the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces under the Academy of Sciences. 
After the October Revolution, Fersman participated in studies of the Kola Peninsula, Tien Shan, Kyzylkum and Karakum, the Urals, Transbaikalia and other regions of the USSR. 
Of particular practical importance were the studies of the Khibiny tundra and the Monchetundra, where, with his participation, deposits of apatite and copper-nickel ores were discovered.

Along with V.I. Vernadsky Fersman became the founder of the science of geochemistry. He wrote a fundamental research in this area - the four-volume "Geochemistry", which was released during 1933-1939. He was one of the first to substantiate the need to apply geochemical methods when searching for mineral deposits. He paid much attention to the problems of regional geochemistry and, as early as 1926, he outlined the Mongol-Okhotsk geochemical belt for the first time. 
The role of Fersman in the popularization of science is great. Being the greatest expert on precious and ornamental stones, he dedicated a whole series of scientific and popular science works to them. His books such as Memories of the Stone, Entertaining Mineralogy, Entertaining Geochemistry and others have brought many young people to geology. 
Over the years, Fersman held various scientific posts: Academician-Secretary of the Division of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and its Vice-President, Member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Director of the Radium Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Kola Base named C.M. Kirov at the USSR Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of Crystallography, Mineralogy and Geochemistry.Mv Lomonosov and the Institute of Geological Sciences, USSR Academy of Sciences. During the Great Patriotic War, he created and headed the commission of scientific assistance to the Soviet Army at the Department of Geological and Geographical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. 
Fersman's scientific merits are marked by the Lenin Prize (1929), Stalin Prize of 1 degree (1942), palladium medal them. Wollaston (1943) of the London Geological Society. He was awarded Order of the Red Banner of Labor. 
He died in Sochi, was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery. 
The island to the north of the island Kheysa in archipelago Franz Josef Land. Discovered by the Smolny hunting vessel (captain D.M. Apollonov). Named by Soviet cartographers in 1955. 
Mountain on the Taimyr Peninsula to the west of the Thaddeus Bay. Named in 1947 by the head of the geological party of the North-Taimyr expedition M.G.Rawich.

Mountain in the southern part of the northern island of Novaya Zemlya.