Alexander Fersman

Alexander Yevgenyevich Fersman (Russian: Александр Евгеньевич Ферсман) (1883–1945) was a prominent Soviet Russian geochemist and mineralogist, and Academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1919).

Alexander Fersman was born in St. Petersburg on November 8, 1883, to Evgeny Aleksandrovich Fersman, an architect and soldier, and Maria Eduardovna Kessler, a painter and pianist. He began exploring the countryside for minerals and collecting crystals while a young boy at his family's summer estate in Crimea. After graduating with honors from Odessa Classical Gymnasium in 1901, he attended the Mining Academy at Novorossisk, where he found the mineralogy courses so dull he attempted to switch his studies to Art History. Family friends persuaded him to take chemistry courses instead.

In 1903, the senior Fersman's duties as an officer in the army of the Tsar took the family to Moscow, where Alexander enrolled in the University of Moscow. In 1904, he became a doctoral student of mineralogist and geochemist V.I. Vernadsky, who became an important influence on his philosophy and career.

In 1908, Fersman began postgraduate work under Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt at Heidelberg University in Germany, and authored a major work on the crystallography of diamond.

In 1910, Fersman returned to Russia, where he began his administrative and teaching career. He became curator of mineralogy at the Russian Academy of Science's Mineralogical Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Museum's director in 1919, following his election as an Academician. Fersman also became a Professor at the People’s (Shanyavsky) University in Moscow. In 1912, he taught what may have been the world’s first courses in geochemistry, and also helped found Priroda (Nature), a popular scientific journal, to which he contributed throughout his life. During World War I, Fersman formed a commission to advise the military on strategic matters involving geology, as he would do later in the Great Patriotic War. He also participated in an Academy of Science project to catalogue Russia's natural resources, and starting in 1915, travelled throughout Russia to assess mineral deposits. Lenin subsequently consulted Fersman for advice on exploiting the country's mineral resources.

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