Academician A. P.  Karpinsky (1847-1936)

Aleksandr Petrovich Karpinsky was born on December 26, 1846 (January 7, 1847, new calendar) in the village of the Frolovsky Mine of the Bogoslovsky Factory in the Urals (presently the town of Krasnotur'insk, Sverdlovsk County, Russian Federation). Both Karpinsky's grandfather and father were mining engineers, and Karpinsky's family was one of the largest and oldest. Eleven years old, 1858, Karpinsky entered the Institute of Mining Engineers in St. Petersburg. In June 1866 he graduated with the Little Gold Medal and received the degree of a mining engineer. He was sent to the Uralian Mining factories and received a position in the Zlatoustovsky Mining Region.
In the following year Karpinsky became an administrator of the Miass Gold Mine. A teaching position and the opportunity for scientific research in the Mining Institute was offered to him by his teacher N. P. Barbot de Marni.
In 1868 Karpinsky worked for almost a whole year on the dissertation "Avgite Rocks near the Village of Muldakaeva and the Kachkanar Mountains." In May 1869 he received his degree. His dissertation became his first publication, published in the same year in "Gornyi Zhurnal". He gave two introductory lectures "Seam Deposits of Copper Ore in the Urals" and "Ancient Uplifts", and was given the position of  an adjunct in the Chair of Geology and Ore Deposits headed by N.P. Barbot de Marni. Karpinsky's  scientific career may be divided into three major periods.

(1) Thirteen years of  Teaching and Scientific work in the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg (1869-1881)

1871, 1872, 1873, 1875, 1876, 1881: Geological field work and exploration
in  the Urals to study crystalline formations, along the railway cuttings of the Kursk-Char'kov and Azov Railways, Sakmara River Basin (Orenburg Region), to Pskov Govern investigating the salt deposits, to the eastern slope of the Urals investigating coal deposits.
In May 1877 Karpinsky received the position of a Professor at the Chair of Geology and Ore Deposits.
Thus, by the end of 1881 the first period of the scientific career of  Karpinsky,  his permanent work in the Mining Institute was accomplished. Students of different fields fascinated by geology were attracted by the interesting lectures given by the young professor  A.P. Karpinsky on petrography, historical geology, and ore deposits. He was internationally recognized in Italy (Bologna) in 1881 where he proposed a new type of coloring for geological maps. The colors he proposed are used in geological mapping up to the present day. Karpinsky started his scientific career with investigation of the geology of the Eastern Urals. Karpinsky was the first to recognize the Permian Artinskian Stage (near the Arti Factory in the South Urals) as a separate stratigraphic unit based on characteristic fossils, primarily ammonoids. On the whole, the first 12 years of his scientific research are mainly marked by petrographic studies that Karpinsky conducted using a microscope technique.

(2) Twenty-one Years in the Geological Committee (Geolkom), the First State Geological Institution in Russia (1881-1902)

1883:   Karpinsky went for three month on a geological field trip to the Perm' and Orenburg Regions. 1885: Karpinsky received the position of Director of the Geological Committee. The geological map of the stern slope of the Urals was published. 1886:   Karpinsky was elected a Permanent Member of the Academy with an adjunct in geology by a Meeting of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.1889: Karpinsky was elected Extraordinary Academician in Geology by a Meeting of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. 1890: Karpinsky went for 2.5 month to Kazan and Tavria Regions and to the Urals on a geological trip. 1892: Karpinsky went to Switzerland and France to take part in the Meeting in Lausanne on the Geological Map of Europe. 1894. Karpinsky received the title of the Honorary Professor of the Mining Institute. 1896. Karpinsky was elected an Ordinary Academician of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. 1897. Karpinsky led the Uralian Excursion for the Seventh Session of the International Geological Congress in St. Petersburg. He was elected a President of this Session. 1903.   Karpinsky resigned from the position of the Director of the Geological Committee by his own request and received a title of the Honorary Director of the Geological Committee. The second period (1882--1903) of the scientific and organizing work of   Karpinsky was marked by his energetic and successful work on the position of the Director of the Geological Committee. Under his guidance the Geological Committee for the first time conducted planned geological mapping of European Russia, started the detailed mapping of the ore deposits in the Urals, coal deposits of the Donets Basin, prospecting of the oil-bearing regions of the Caucasus, geological exploration in Siberia and the Far East. Karpinsky was involved in many geological projects, edited multi-volume series "Geological Studies and Prospecting along the Siberian Railway" and "Geological Studies in Gold-Bearing Regions in Siberia." As a result the knowledge of the geology of European Russia and the Urals has considerably extended, the Russian part of the International Geological Map of Europe has been completed, and the immense studies in various field of geology have been accomplished.
It is noteworthy that during the second period of his scientific career A.P. Karpinsky completed half of his fundamental studies in paleontology, stratigraphy, paleogeography, and tectonics regarded as a great contribution to science. In his paper "Notes on the Character of Rock Dislocations in Southern European Russia" (1883) Karpinsky revealed and studied for the first time "rudimentary ridge bands", peculiar dislocated zones in the south of European Russia. In the international literature these unique bands with distorted bedding received the name of Karpinsky lines (lineament). He always studied problems of applied geology. For instance, studying the stratigraphy of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Rocks on the eastern slope of the Urals, he noted the presence of potentially coal bearing Carboniferous beds.
Together with other Russian geologists, including G.A. Trautschold, V.O. Kovalevsky, A.A. Stukenberg, and A.A. Inostranzew,   Karpinsky attempted to reconstruct the distribution of land and marine basins in the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic of European Russia. In his classical contribution "Review of the Physical-Geographical environment of European Russia in Past Geological Periods" (1887) Karpinsky outlined seas and continents in 11 paleogeographic maps. Seven years later, in his paper "General Character of Fluctuations of the Earth's Crust in European Russia" (1894) Karpinsky introduced schematic maps revealing the change in outlines of the ancient basins and analyzing land-sea configuration in the geological past. In the south and central part of the Russian Plain latitudinal depressions prevail, whereas in the eastern part longitudinal depressions are dominant. Karpinsky suggested that the marginal northwestern area of European Russia was almost always land. The Baltic Crystalline Precambrian Massif was a buffer (stable axis) along which the elevations and depressions occurred, and in the southeast there was the Caspian Depression that from the Upper Devonian was covered by the sea.
Analyzing successive changes of the boundaries of the marine basins in the large area under consideration, Karpinsky noted correlation between the movements in geosynclines and in the platforms. The zones of depression in the Russian Plain were usually parallel to the Urals and the Caucasus. In the succeeding decades geologists world-wide revealed the character of the tectonic movements using paleogeographic analysis. Karpinsky suggested that the pattern of the Earth's crust fluctuations repeatedly occur in other countries with similar geology. Karpinsky suggested in his paper "Regularity in Outline, Distribution, and Structure of Continents" (1888) that slow but constant rising and submerging movements could be part of the entire global system. He predicted the discovery of global plate tectonics.
From the end of 1880's to the beginning of 1890's Karpinsky constantly published papers on paleontology, a field that became dominant in his science from this time until the end of his life (Borisyak, 1936; Davitashvili, 1947; Karpinsky, 1947; Hecker, 1949).   Karpinsky studied various fossil groups (invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants). This may be attributed to the fact that during the geological mapping, fossils were important to detect the age of rocks. Karpinsky was also fascinated by enigmatic fossils.
Using the Artinskian Stage Karpinsky showed that the so-called incompleteness of the geological record cannot completely mask evolutionary trends if they are studied based on the ontogenetic-phylogenetic relationships. Based on Darwin's theory Karpinsky considered geological systems as conventional stratigraphic units that are recognized in the thick sedimentary sequences by sharp changes in fossils. The evolution of faunal groups that was not synchronous in different regions did not allow drawing of precise boundaries between the stratigraphic units of different rank. Karpinsky concluded that there are so-called transitional beds between the series and systems, i.e., he understood the principles of stratigraphic classification.
The beds of the Artinskian Stage are "transitional beds" because the fossils are characteristic of both the Carboniferous and Permian. In his fundamental study "On Ammonoids of Artinskian Stage and Some Related Carboniferous Taxa" (1891) Karpinsky confirmed the hypothesis of "transitional beds." Since his original views on stratigraphic subdivisions were generally confirmed by the phylogenetic reconstructions of ammonoids, Karpinsky immediately became recognized among leading paleontologists of that time.
In another classic work "On the Remains of Edestids and on the New Genus "Helicoprion" (1899)   Karpinsky studied an unusually coiled organ of a fossil animal from the Artinskian. Based on careful observations   Karpinsky logically explained this fossil as a dental apparatus of a shark shaped like a "spiral weave."
From then onwards the entire life of Karpinsky was closely connected with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is the most important period of his life.

Third period, 1902-1936, close connection with the Russian Academy of Sciences

1904 after the death of Academician N.F. Dubrovin Karpinsky was temporary elected Senior Secretary of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.1909, A.P. Karpinsky was appointed Temporary Senior Secretary of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
It is noteworthy that during Karpinsky's association with the presidency of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he completed one of his major studies on paleobotany published in the Transactions of the Geological Committee, the monograph "On Trochiliscus." The name Trochiliscus was derived from Latin "trochos (wheel). K.N. Pander first discovered these microscopic spheroid floral remains in 1856 near the town of Pavlovsk on the bed planes of the Devonian limestones and named them "Trochiliscus"; he thought they were seeds or spores of fossil lepidosperms. These small bodies attracted attention of many Russian and foreign paleontologists who compared them to foraminifers, eggs, etc. He carefully studied the fossil and all the relevant literature. Karpinsky compared many specimens of these and similar organisms including recent ones and concluded that Trochiliscus are algae similar to Characeae and they may represent offshoots of the same phylogenetic lineage.
1917, Karpinsky was elected President of the Russian Academy of Sciences for five years. After two centuries of existence, the Russian Academy of Sciences held its first elections for its president on March 15, 1917. Before this the Emperor always appointed presidents. Later Karpinsky was re-elected three times. Karpinsky became President of the Academy not long before the October Revolution. During the very difficult period from 1917 to 1936 Karpinsky governed the major scientific establishment in Russia. He worked together with outstanding scientists from various branches of science and technology.
1925, Karpinsky was elected Academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.1935, Karpinsky was elected Honorary Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Seventeenth Session of the International Geological Congress planned to be held in Moscow in 1937.
Three month before he died  Karpinsky gave a speech to young people: "Reserve sharp self-criticism, modesty that was so typical in all those who search for verity. Gracefully listen arguments against your conclusions since, as the great mind of Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci remarked "The opponent noting your mistakes is more useful to you than your friend that tries to disguise them."
July 15, 1936, A. P. Karpinsky died in the village of Udel'naya nearby Moscow.

(Greatly shortened chronicle of the life and work of A.P. Karpinsky, on the basis of the extended article from Yu. Ya. Soloviev in Paleontologicheskii Zhurnal, 1999 (5).
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