Mikhail Zalesskii
Zalesskii, Mikhail Dmitrievich
Born Sept. 3 (15), 1877, in Orel; died Dec. 22, 1946, in Leningrad. Soviet paleobotanist; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929).
Zalesskii graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1900. He worked on the Geology Committee and in its institutes (1903–40). His main works deal with Carboniferous and Permian flora and the stratigraphy of the Donbas, the Kuznetsk coal fields, the Caucasus, the Urals, and other regions of the USSR. He studied coal formation, used the comparative anatomical method to investigate fossil plants, and described a great many new forms.