Leonid Petrovich Tatarinov

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Leonid Petrovich Tatarinov
USSR
Died24 August 2011
NationalityRussian
EducationDoctor of Science (1970)
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Alma materMoscow State University (1949)
AwardsOrder of the Badge of Honour (1975)[1]
Medal “Friendship” (Mongolia) (1977) [1]
USSR State Prize (1978)[1]
Order of the Polar Star (Mongolia) (1982)[1]
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1986)[1]
Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" IV class (1999)[2]
Scientific career
FieldsPaleontology
InstitutionsPaleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences

Leonid Petrovich Tatarinov (

phylogeny, and evolution.[3]

Tatarinov became interested in science from his school years but he was conscripted into the army at the age of 17 in 1943 but discharged in 1944 after suffering from an infection. He then went to the

Raissa L’vovna Berg. He studied population genetics under Berg and then took a keener interest in organismal evolution after being influenced by G.P. Dementiev. He studied amphibians under A.N. Druzhinin and B.S. Matveev. He then studied birds with E.P. Spangenberg. As a student he was a witness to the historic clash between Lysenko and the geneticists in 1948 which was to affect Soviet biology. In 1953 he received a PhD with a thesis “On the Role of Living Conditions in the Phylogeny of Amphibians.” In 1969 he received a D.Sc. for a thesis on “Problems of the Evolution of Theriodonts.” He became the director of the paleontological institute from 1975. Tatarinov believed in deep parallelisms in vertebrate evolution and did not accept the ideas of phylogeny reconstruction that make use of parsimonious character changes.[4][5]

References