Edelstein Yakov Samoilovich 
(28.08.1869- 21.01.1952)

Famous Russian geologist and geographer. 
Born in the village of Balakley, Zmievsky district, Kharkov province. After graduating from the gymnasium with a gold medal, he entered the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Kharkov University. As a student, he made research trips to the Caucasus and Yekaterinoslav province, publishing an extensive scientific article. 
Upon graduation in 1895, Edelstein University for 6 years conducted geological and geographical research of various regions and countries of the Far East. 
Since 1907, the thirty-year “Siberian” stage of Edelstein began. He worked in Minusinsky Krai, Kuznetsk Alatau, Sayan Mountains, Western Siberia, Transbaikalia. During the Great Patriotic War, he headed in Sverdlovsk work on the compilation of a geomorphological map of the Urals. A large team of specialists worked under his leadership. 
For 40 years, Edelstein was a member of the Geological Committee (now the All-Russian Geological Institute), being one of its leaders. Since 1937, he was the chief editor of the journal "Geology of the USSR". 
Great are the merits of Edelstein in geography. From the first steps of his activity, besides geology, he was interested in the relief and landscapes of the studied areas.Immediately after his Far Eastern expeditions, Edelstein became an active member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, later was one of its leaders — the secretary of the society, the chief editor of Izvestia, the chairman of the Geomorphological Commission, and in recent years was a member of the Presidium of the society. Edelstein's contribution to the organization of the geographical congresses of 1933 and 1947 is great.

Edelstein's favorite research area was Minusinsk region, but much has been done by him in other regions. In particular, on the instructions of the Arctic Institute, he investigated the geomorphological features of the northern regions of the USSR from the Kola Peninsula to the Chukchi Sea. 
Edelstein devoted much of his strength and talent to teaching. He was one of the founders and first professors of the Higher Geographical Courses and the Geographical Institute established in Leningrad, and later the Dean of the Faculty of Geography, headed the departments of geomorphology and general geology. He taught a course in geomorphology and created the Leningrad school of geomorphology. For a long time, Edelstein headed the Geographic and Economic Institute established at the Faculty of Geography. His merits are marked by the title of Honored Worker of Science, Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and Lenin. 
This honored man who reached 80 years old was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in labor camps in 1949. Began a new, fortunately, the last stage of the Stalinist repression. Now they started on the "rootless cosmopolitans". 
Edelstein died in the prison hospital. 
A glacier in the center of the northern island of Novaya Zemlya, southeast of the top of the Crestovaya Bay. Named in 1925 by the Geological Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences.