Berg Lev Semyonovich
14 March [ 02 March] 1876, Bendery, Bessarabia Governorate — 24 December 1950, Leningrad
Biography, education, career:
Lev Berg studied at a gymnasium in Kishinev. In 1893–1898 he was a student of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Moscow University, with D.N. Anuchin as his academic advisor. In 1899–1902 Berg was in charge of the fisheries around the Syr Darya river, and in 1903–1904 – in Kazan. In 1904–1913 he worked as a zoologist at the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences in Saint-Petersburg. In 1909 he was conferred the degree of Doctor of Geography for his dissertation, titled The Sea of Aral. In 1914–1918 he was a Professor of Moscow Institute of Agriculture. From 1916 – Professor of Petrograd University, later renamed as Leningrad State University. In 1918–1925 he was one of the founders and then Professor of the Institute of Geography in Petrograd. In 1917 he was a research fellow at the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia. In 1934–1950 – Head of the Laboratory of the Institute of Zoology, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Doctor of Geography (1909), Doctor of Biology (1935).
Areas of expertise: Ethnogeography; History and ethnography of the peoples of Siberia, the Extreme North, and the Far East; Historiography, Source studies and Methodology of Ethnography