Iurii Polianskii

Born Mar. 2 (15), 1904, in St. Petersburg. Soviet protozoologist and professor (1933). Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1968). Member of the CPSU since 1941. Student and colleague of V. A. Dogel’.

Polianskii graduated from Leningrad University in 1924, completed his graduate work in 1929, and then worked at the university. From 1927 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1948 he taught at the A. I. Herzen Pedagogical Institute, becoming head of a subdepartment there in 1933. From 1941 to 1945 he served in the Soviet Army.

Between 1948 and 1952, Polianskii was a research worker at the Murmansk Biological Station on the Barents Sea. From 1953 to 1956 he was director of the Institute of Biology of the Karelian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Beginning in 1953, he also worked at Leningrad University, where in 1955 he became head of the university’s subdepartment of invertebrate zoology. He helped organize the Institute of Cytology at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in 1957 became head of a laboratory at the institute. In 1968 he became president of the All-Union Society of Protozoologists.

Polianskii’s chief works deal with the taxonomy, cytology, morphology, and physiology of protozoans and with parasitology, ecology, evolutionary theory, and methods of teaching biology. He is also the author of a number of textbooks and manuals. Polianskii has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and several medals.