Gromov Leonid Vasilyevich 
(28.07.1905– 23.12.1999*)

Soviet geologist. 
Born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) in the family of a tradesman. 
He graduated from the three classes of "higher primary school". There was a civil war, the family lived hard, you had to get a profession and start making money. Gromov entered the Land Survey School, tried to combine his studies with any kind of work just to ease the material situation of the family. At the end of the first year of school, at the age of 14, he began working as a digger. He was an athlete, one of the first to become a school instructor in physical education, pioneer leader at the Simbirsk builders club. 
In 1921, an active and literate boy from a simple family was noticed and hired by the Simbirsk Emergency Commission to combat counterrevolution, speculation, and crimes of office. He was accepted by assignment officer, recommended to continue his studies. 
In 1925, Gromov graduated from the Rabfak. He was 20 years old, before him opened a wide field of activity. In the same year he entered the exploration department of the Moscow Mining Academy. 
Already in his student years, Gromov became acquainted with the Polar region. His practice took place in the Norilsk ore district, where he, together with his colleagues Novikov and Vorontsov, discovered the nickel and platinum deposits. 
After graduating from the Academy, Gromov worked in Eastern Transbaikalia, in 1935 he was offered to study the geology of Wrangel Island, to which he gladly agreed. In five years of expeditions, Gromov performed a geological survey of the island, compiled his first geological map, discovered manifestations of tin, gold, rock crystal, and gypsum. 
When the war began, Gromov refused to evacuate, sent his wife and three young children to Siberia and agreed to go as a chief of staff to a partisan unit in the Smolensk region, to which he was certified by the battalion commissar. This partisan compound cleared a significant district of the Smolensk region from the German invaders, restoring Soviet power, collective farms, a school and a hospital there. In one of the battles, Gromov was seriously wounded, comrades under shelling carried him out of the battlefield, and then were carried by partisan trails through thickets and marshes 70 km to the place of evacuation. 
After the war, Gromov returned to the Geological Directorate of the Main Sea Route. Since 1948, he worked on expeditions in Siberia. In the Eastern Transbaikalia, he discovered a large molybdenum deposit, the Shakhtolinskoye, for three years he worked as chief specialist of the State Committee on Geological, Geographical and Economic Sciences of the USSR, and headed one of the departments of the Geological Institute in Moscow. He gave his richest collection of minerals to his native city of Ulyanovsk. 
Gromov published more than 120 scientific papers testifying to the high professional qualifications of the author. But the book “Named after a geologist”, written by Gromov and S.A. Danilian. This book, in which on the basis of a huge literary and archival material collected and systematized information about geologists, whose names are called various geographical and geological objects, demonstrates the high human qualities of its authors.

He died in Moscow. Urn with ashes buried at Kotlyakovsky cemetery.

Mountain on Wrangel Island. Named by polar geologists in 1952. 
* information on the date of death and the place of burial provided by the grandson of L.V. Gromov, Mikhail Petrov.