Knipovich, Nikolai

Born Mar. 25 (Apr 6), 1862, in Sveaborg (present-day Suomenlinna), Finland; died Feb. 23, 1939, in Leningrad. Soviet zoologist. Honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1935; corresponding member, 1927).

Knipovich graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1886. He was arrested by the tsarist government for revolutionary activity in 1887 and 1896 and dismissed in 1899 from the university as “politically unreliable.”

Knipovich defended his master’s dissertation, “Materials Toward an Understanding of the Ascothoracida,” in 1892. He was appointed privatdocent at the University of St. Petersburg in 1893. He worked from 1894 to 1921 in the zoological museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. From 1911 to 1930 he was a professor in the department of zoology and general biology of the Women’s (now the First Leningrad) Medical Institute.

Knipovich was an organizer of commercial-scientific research on the seas of the European USSR. He was also the organizer and director of several commercial-scientific expeditions (Murmansk, in 1898–1901; the Caspian, in 1886, 1904, 1912–13, 1914–15, and 1931–32; the Baltic, in 1902; and the Azov and Black seas, in 1922–27). He wrote monographs on hydrology and fishing in the North Arctic, Barents, Caspian, Azov, and Black seas. He also wrote a number of works on the hydrology and zoology of marine invertebrates (mollusks, parasitic barnacles) and the geological past of the northern seas.

In 1898, Knipovich became Russia’s representative to and vice-president of the International Council for Marine Research. He was also an active member and organizer of many scientific commissions and conferences and a founding member of several marine studies institutes.