Kaminsky Anton Antonovich 
(05(17).11.1862–05.08.1936)

Outstanding Russian meteorological climatologist. 
He was born in a small village of Sebezhsky district of the Vitebsk province into a large and poor noble family. In childhood, received a strict home education. In addition to the necessary knowledge, he was instilled discipline, love of learning, habit of work. 
At the age of 12, the boy experienced a terrible tragedy: he lost his parents and went to the care of relatives. Already at this age, life made him manifest the masculine qualities inherent in him by nature and parental education. He understood the importance and necessity of education and with great diligence he studied at the Mitava Gymnasium. After graduating from it, in 1882, Kaminsky entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University, where, despite the difficult material conditions, he gave all his strength to gaining knowledge. 
It is known that the choice of the direction of a person's activity is often determined by the influence of some outstanding personality met by a person in his younger years. For Kaminsky, Professor A.I. Voyeikov. His remarkable lectures fascinated Kaminsky, and he also chose meteorology as his future specialty on the student’s bench. 
After graduating from the University in 1888, Kaminsky worked for some time in various organizations of the capital, but by the end of 1888, realizing his desire to engage in meteorology, he entered as a trainee in the Main Physical Observatory of the Academy of Sciences. After reviewing the topics of all its departments, he chose to work on the organization of a network of meteorological stations in the field of climatology, an area of activity that has become a matter of his life. As time has shown, in the face of Kaminsky, the observatory acquired a person of enormous energy, who possesses great organizational abilities, and a clear executor of the decisions made. 
Soon Kaminsky was connected to the responsible work on the organization of a network of meteorological stations. In a short time he became the right hand of the network manager R.R. Bergman, a specialist worthy in all respects, but having a gentle nature, which adversely affected such work. Due to his nature, Kaminsky was able to find people to make observations, maintain discipline among observers, find additional funds for organizing and equipping stations, and solve a huge amount of routine routine issues every day. He made enormous efforts to organize the inspection of meteorological observations. Attracting to the inspection and organization of stations everyone who was involved in the observations and was well acquainted with them, Kaminsky often traveled to remote, uninhabited areas for this purpose. Particularly impressive was his trip to the north of Russia in 1899. During it, he traveled almost all of Pechora and the Barents Sea coast, from the Murmansk coast, from Cola, walked with a barometer and instrumentation margin of more than a hundred kilometers to organize a meteorological station on Imandra Lake in a small village now called Khibiny. For a long time it was the only one in the vast space and was of great importance for the meteorological support of the western part of the Kola Peninsula. For the entire pre-revolutionary period of Kaminsky’s activity, the network of Russian meteorological stations increased from 372 in 1889 to 1416 in 1914. 
Kaminsky combined very laborious organizational, inspection, and methodological work with fruitful research activities, making his personal contribution to the study and solution of a wide variety of meteorology and hydrology issues. Especially a lot of research conducted by him to study the humidity of the air, the circulation of water vapor and its transfer within Russia. All these questions were directly related to the solution of the drought problem and had not only theoretical, but also practical significance.Creative communication with Kaminsky was a great help to the great V.V. Dokuchaev when he developed a set of measures to combat drought. 
Kaminsky was one of the first scientists who initiated a systematic and comprehensive study of the climatic features of Russian resort areas. By joining the Society for the Preservation of Public Health, he solved the problem of familiarizing doctors with the various climatic features of our country, in particular its resorts, and using them for treatment. 
Beginning in 1918, Kaminsky completely switched to work in the field of hydrology. He organized a committee for research on hydrology, meteorology and geology and, as its chairman, led the hydrometeorological service of commercial ports on the Baltic Sea. In the 1920s, he combined hydrometeorological services on various seas, attracting the best scientists to the work, among whom was V.Yu. Vize. Kaminsky headed the Central Hydrometeorological Bureau of the country, in which, apart from work in the field of hydrology and meteorology, fluctuations in sea level, sea currents and coastal morphology were studied, the thickness and physical properties of sea ice cover and many others were studied. Kaminsky did a lot personally in studying the causes of floods in Leningrad, the study of currents and ice cover in the Neva Bay, in the question of the sewage system of Leningrad.

The achievements of Kaminsky in the field of training experienced scientific and technical staff in creating a school of domestic climatologists are great. In addition to giving lectures at numerous temporary courses, Kaminsky taught for many years at various central educational institutions. He conducted courses in climatology, meteorology, hydrology at the agricultural and pedagogical institutes, Leningrad State University.

Grave A.A. Kaminsky. 1975

Grave A.A. Kaminsky after the destruction of the gravestone

Grave A.A. Kaminsky after the first G.P.Avetisov's intervention