The directory «Plots»

Yefremov (Ефремов) Ivan Antonovich (real patronymic Antipovich)
(1907—1972)

Ivan Yefremov was a Soviet paleontologist and science fiction author. He originated taphonomy, the study of dead organisms' fate.

Born in the village of Vyritsa in St. Petersburg's province on the 22nd (old style 9th) of April, 1908. Yefremov includes the year 1907 in his biography in order to begin his labor activity earlier. During his young years he had to combine his studies with different kinds of labour. In 1924 under the influence of academician Sushkin he became interested with paleontology. Yefremov was admitted into the Leningrad State University but did not graduate. From the middle of 1930 he took part in several paleontological expeditions on Volga region, Ural, Central Asia. He became a Laboratory Head in the Institute of Paleontology. 1935 he passed an external exam in Leningrad Mining Institute. In the same year he became a Candidate of biological science, and in 1941—a Doctor of biological science.

In the 1940s Yefremov developed a new field of science called taphonomy: the monograph "Taphonomy" was published in 1950 and many regulations of it were successfully employed during his expedition on Gobi desert in Mongolia. In these years he became the world's famous scientist[citation needed] and won the State Prize.

The first belles-lettres story of Ivan Yefremov was first published in 1944. In 1949 the historical novel The Land of Foam (Great Arc, 1946) was published. But he became most famous with his novel Andromeda Nebula (Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale, 1957). This book is the hymn to a whole-hearted world of communist future of mankind that reached the stars and changed the Earth into blooming garden. There is no more inequality between people, the social structure of the society allows each person to reach elevations of self-development. The all-Universe communication system called Great Circle includes mankind in the interstellar family of rational creatures. This book became a moral guiding line for many soviet people.

USSR, 1982, Ivan Yefremov