Kalitskii, Kazimir Petrovich

Born Mar. 4 (16), 1873, in St. Petersburg; died Dec. 28, 1941, in Leningrad. Soviet geologist and petroleum specialist. Doctor of geological and min-eralogical sciences. Professor from 1941.

Kalitskii graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of Mines in 1899. In 1901 he began working on the Geological Committee, which was later reorganized into the AU-Union Geological Oil Prospecting Scientific Research Institute. He conducted numerous geological investigations in many petroleum-bearing regions of the USSR (Middle Asia, the Caucasus, the Volga Region). His primary works were devoted to the problem of the origin of petroleum and the formation of its deposits. He developed the hypothesis that petroleum originates from marine plants; he also believed that the migration of petroleum does not play a part in the formation of petroleum deposits. Kalitskii compiled one of the first textbooks on petroleum geology (1921).