Lev Semenovich Berg

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Lev Semenovich Berg

Born	March 14, 1876 Bender
Died	December 24, 1950 Leningrad
Fields	geographer and biologist

Lev Semyonovich Berg (Russian: Лев Семёнович Берг; March 14, 1876, Bender - December 24, 1950, Leningrad) was a leading Soviet geographer and biologist who served as President of the Soviet Geographical Society between 1940 and 1950.

Lev Berg graduated from the Moscow University in 1898. Between 1903 and 1914, he worked in the Museum of Zoology in Saint Petersburg. He was one of the founders of the Geographical Institute, now a Faculty of Geography of the Saint Petersburg University.

Berg studied and determined the depth of the lakes of Central Asia, including Balkhash and Issyk Kul. He developed Dokuchaev's doctrine of natural zones, which became one of the foundations of the Soviet biology. Among his pioneering monographs on climatology were "Climate and Life" (1922) and "Foundations of Climatology" (1928).

During his lifetime, Berg was a towering presence in the science of ichthyology. In 1916, he published four volumes of the study of Fishes of Russia. The fourth edition was issued in 1949 as Freshwater Fishes of the Soviet Union and Adjacent Countries and won him the Stalin Prize. He was said to have discovered the symbiotic relationship between lampreys and salmon. Berg's name is featured in the Latin appellations of more than 60 species of plants and animals.

In the West, Berg is best known as the author of the controversial macroevolution theory of Nomogenesis (Berg, L. S. Nomogenes ili evolutsia na osnove zakonomernostey. Trudy geograficheskogo instituta. T. 1. Petersburg: Gos. Izd 1922).

In 2001, the Central Bank of Transnistria minted a silver coin honoring this native of today's Transnistria, as part of a series of memorable coins called The Outstanding People of Pridnestrovie.

[edit] Works

"Fresh-water fishes of Russia" (²1923)
Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering's Kamchatka Voyages (1924)
"Principles of climatology" (1926)
"Freshwater fishes of the U.S.S.R. and adjacent countries. Volume 1-3. Israel Program for Scientific Translations Ltd, Jerusalem. 1962-65 (Russian version published 1948-49)."
"Natural regions of the U.S.S.R." (1950)
"Classification of fishes, both recent and fossil" (1940)