MPI History - Predecessors


• 1941: A permafrost station founded in Yakutsk by the Obruchev Institute for Permafrost Studies (Moscow) with Pavel Melnikov as Head. It became the first permanent research establishment of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Yakutia.


• 1956: The Yakutsk permafrost station reorganized into the North-Eastern Department of the Obruchev Institute


• 1961: The North-Eastern Department merged with the Obruchev Institute’s permafrost station in Aldan and the Northern Sea Route Committee’s permafrost station in Igarka to form the Permafrost Institute subordinate to the USSR Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch. Other departments of the Obruchev Institute were reorganized into the VSEGINGEO, PNIIS and NIIOSP institutes headquartered in Moscow.

 

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Drilling site for subpermafrost groundwater
in Sergelyakh, Yakutsk area, 1941.

Nikolay A. Tsytovich (left), first chair of the
Yakutia Division, USSR Academy of Sciences and Pavel I. Melnikov,
Head of the Yakutsk Permafrost Station, 1951.

Participants of the permafrost meeting on the front stairs
of the Yakutsk station’s building, 1958.
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Nina Velmina and field assistant on a horseback mounted
expedition through the Dzugdzhur Range, 1953.

On the way to the Suntar-Khayata
international glaciological station, 1958.

Nina Anisimova (far right) led a hydrochemical team
of the Middle Lena groundwater survey, 1950.
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Reindeer sledding was the prime form of
winter transportation for hydrogeologists
in southern Yakutia.

Examining an icing in the Samokit valley,
southern Yakutia, 1959
(l to r: S. Fotiev, P. Lugovoy and M. Kladov).

Sergey Fotiev studies a glacial lake
in the upper Ungra River area, 1959.