Ianshin, Aleksandr

Born Mar. 15 (28), 1911, in Smolensk. Soviet geologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958). Hero of Socialist Labor (1981).

In 1936, Ianshin began working at the Geological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he was appointed head of a department in 1956. In 1958 he became deputy director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He has been president of the Moscow Society of Naturalists since 1967.

Ianshin’s main works are devoted to the tectonic structure and development of the Southern Urals, the Caspian Basin, the Turan Plate, and the southern edge of the Siberian Platform. He was the first to develop and use the method of reconstructing buried Paleozoic structures by studying and tracing the inherited platform dislocations. He developed the study of young platforms with a folded Paleozoic foundation. Ianshin received the State Prize of the USSR in 1969 for his role in compiling The Tectonic Map of Eurasia. He also worked out the stratigraphy of Paleogene deposits in the Aral Region. Ianshin played an important role in the discovery of deposits of phosphorites, potassium salts, bauxites, fuel gases, and other minerals, as well as a number of artesian basins in Western Kazakhstan and Southern Siberia.

Ianshin has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and several medals.