Ivan Efremov

Ivan Antonovich (Antipovich) Yefremov was a Russian Soviet science-fiction writer, paleontologist, and the founder of taphonomy; a cosmist philosopher and social thinker, and a recipient of the Stalin Prize, second degree. He was born in the village of Vyritsa, Tsarskoselsky Uyezd, Saint Petersburg Governorate, into the family of a timber merchant. In 1914 the family moved to Berdyansk, where Ivan Yefremov entered gymnasium. The Revolution was accompanied by his parents’ long-overdue divorce; in 1919 his mother moved with the children to Kherson, married a Red Army commander, and left with him, leaving the children with an aunt, who soon died of typhus. Ivan attached himself to a Red Army auto company, and with it, as a “son of the regiment,” reached Perekop. During the bombing of Ochakov he suffered a concussion and from then on stuttered slightly. In 1921, after demobilization, he went to Petrograd with a firm determination to study and, thanks to the selfless help of teachers, completed school in two and a half years, covering a five-year program. In 1923 Yefremov passed the examinations for a coastal-navigation mate at the Petrograd Maritime Classes and, after finishing school, left for the Far East in the spring of 1924. The young Yefremov came to paleontology after meeting Academician P. P. Sushkin at the age of 14; Sushkin introduced him to this science and helped him take his first steps in it. Having sailed the Pacific Ocean in 1924 as an ordinary seaman through the patronage of the famous captain D. A. Lukhmanov and visited Japan, the future paleontologist returned to Leningrad and entered the university’s biology department. However, he was unable to complete his studies: from the mid-1920s his life was spent on expeditions that brought numerous valuable finds and discoveries. The list of his expeditions is impressive:

1925 – ornithological expedition to Azerbaijan, sailing on the Caspian Sea as captain of a motor launch. 1926 – Turgai paleontological expedition. Paleontological expedition to Mount Bolshoye Bogdo. 1927 – Paleontological expedition to the Vet