Petr Nikolaevich Chirvinskii

Chirvinskii, Petr Nikolaevich

 

Born Jan. 26 (Feb. 7), 1880, in Petrovsko-Razumovskoe, now within the city limits of Moscow; died June 21, 1955, in Perm’. Soviet geologist. Doctor of sciences in geology and mineralogy (1919). Son of N. P. Chirvinskii.

P. N. Chirvinskii graduated from the University of Kiev in 1902. He became a professor at the Don Polytechnic Institute in Novocherkassk in 1909 and at the University of Perm’ in 1943.

Chirvinskii’s main works dealt with such fields as mineralogy and petrology, geochemistry, paleohydrogeology, the study of useful minerals, and the history of science. Chirvinskii was the first to determine the average chemical and mineral composition and atomic structure of granites and other plutonic rocks (1911), of the earth as a whole (1919), and of meteorites. He ascertained the laws governing the crystallization of plutonic rocks and meteorites. He also explained the origin of a number of deposits of various minerals, such as iron ores, phosphorites, tuffs, and potassium salts.

Chirvinskii wrote A Course in Deposits of Useful Minerals (parts 1 and 2; 1926) and A Textbook for Hydrogeology (1922).

WORKS

Sneg i snegozaderzhanie. Rostov-on-Don, 1931.
Srednii khimicheskii sostav glavnykh mineralov izverzhennykh, metamorficheskikh i osadochnykh porod. Kharkov, 1953.
Pallasity, ikh mineralogo-khimicheskii sostav, polozhenie v riadu drugikh meteoritov i voprosy proiskhozhdeniia. Moscow, 1967.

REFERENCE

Petr Nikolaevich Chirvinskii. Moscow, 1960. (Materialy k biobibliografii uchenykh SSSR: Seriia geologicheskikh nauk, fasc. 17.)

D. P. SERDIUCHENKO