Ivan Dmitrievich Strelnikov. Part 1. An amazing life

The article devoted to a major Russian / Soviet biologist Ivan Dmitrievich Strel’nikov, his amazing trajectory of life. But now his work, unfortunately, is rarely remembered. He was born in a remote Russian village of Tambov province in a poor peasant family in 1887. Since childhood he had had important qualities: thirst for knowledge and love of nature. He finished the church-teacher school in Smolensk province, after that he studied at the Liberal high school of Professor P.F.Lesgaft in St. Petersburg. I.D.Strel’nikov was not only his student, but a colleague. Later he became a disciple and colleague of a wonderful biologist S.I.Metal’nikov. In 1914–1915 he took charge of the student group expedition to South America, which collected unique biological and ethnographic material. He worked in Italy at the Russian biological station in Villafranka, in Paris in the laboratory of I.I.Mechnikov and in the United States in the laboratory of T.Morgan. He was acquainted with I.P.Pavlov. He underwent his training in Germany and other European countries. While being a student, I.D.Strel’nikov began his teaching profession. At the same time he conducted active research. In 1935 he was conferred the degree of Doctor of Biological Sciences without thesis defense. He contributed to the creation of the Geographic Institute, that later became the geographical faculty of the Leningrad state University, worked at the Department of vertebrate zoology of biological faculty of the Leningrad state University. In the Zoological Institute he organized the laboratory of ecology and for some time headed it, taught at the Leningrad agricultural Institute, where he created the Department of Zoology and for a long time headed it. He studied a number of important problems of animal ecology, comparative physiology, anatomical and physiological basis of vertebrate evolution, and had more than 100 scientific publications. I.D.Strel’nikov worked in different regions of the Soviet Union from Arctic, Crimea, lowlands and highlands of the Caucasus, to the Karakum desert. He died in 1981 at the age of 93.