Russian geochemist

Aleksandr Evgenievich Fersman was a Russian geochemist and mineralogist. He made major contributions to Russian geology, both in theory and exploration, advancing scientific understanding of crystallography and the distribution of elements in the earth's crust, as well as founding a popular scientific journal and writing biographical sketches of eminent scientists. He was known as a synthesizer of ideas from different subdisciplines.

Fersman was born in St. Petersburg on November 8, 1883, to a family that valued both art and science. His father, Evgeny Aleksandrovich Fersman, was an architect and his mother, Maria Eduardovna Kessler, a pianist and painter. Fersman's maternal uncle, A. E. Kessler, had studied chemistry under Russian chemist Aleksandr Mikhailovich Butlerov.

At the family's summer estate in the Crimea, Fersman first discovered minerals and began to collect them. When his mother became ill, the family traveled to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad...