Kostiakov, Aleksei

Born Mar. 16 (28), 1887, in Serpukhov, Moscow Oblast; died Aug. 30, 1957, in Moscow. Soviet scientist; founder of reclamation science in the USSR. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1933). Academician of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935).

Kostiakov graduated in 1912 from the Moscow Agricultural Institute (now the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy). From 1912 to 1919 he conducted research on water consumption per unit of time and area (experimental-reclamation studies) for the first time in Russia. His initiative led to the establishment of subdepartments of reclamation at the Petrovskoe Agricultural Academy and the Moscow Institute of Water Management Engineers and, in 1923, to the establishment of the State Institute of Agricultural Reclamation, which he directed until 1929. He developed methods of planning, designing, and building reclamation systems for socialist agriculture and worked out a theory of irrigation regimes, technique of watering crops, control of water losses, and so forth. The All-Union Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Land Reclamation was named after Kostiakov in 1958. He received the State Prize of the USSR (1951, 1952) and was awarded two Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and gold medals of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.