Zubov Nikolay Nikolaevich

Nikolai Zubov was born on May 23, 1885 in the city of Lipcani, Moldova. He received his primary education at the 7th St. Petersburg Gymnasium and the 1st Cadet Corps. In 1901 he entered the Naval Cadet Corps. In less than nineteen years, he became a warrant officer. It was released ahead of schedule, as the Russo-Japanese War began.

During the war, Zubov was appointed officer in charge of the newly-built battleship “Eagle” squadron. In June 1904, of his own free will, he was transferred by the officer in charge of the destroyer Brilliant. At the rank of midshipman participated in the Tsushima battle, was wounded in the leg. He was treated in a hospital in Shanghai, in November 1905 he returned to Russia.

In 1910, Nikolai Nikolayevich graduated from the Hydrographic Department of the Maritime Academy. In 1912, as a senior officer of the Bakan messenger ship, he made a shooting survey of Mityushiha Bay on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, as well as the lower reaches and mouth of the Pesha River in the Bohemian Bay. In 1913 he resigned due to illness. In 1914, he trained in Bergen at international oceanographic courses at the Institute of Geophysics.

With the beginning of the First World War, Zubov returned to service and became the commander of the destroyer "Obedient". A few months later he was transferred to the headquarters of the Fleet Commander as the flagship navigational officer in the headquarters of the head of the Baltic submarine division. In October 1915, the submarine "Cayman", which was then the senior lieutenant, captured a German ship and brought him to Abo. For participation in this operation he is presented to the Order of St. Anne of the III degree with swords and a bow. In December, promoted to captain of the 2nd rank.

All these years, Nikolai Zubov has been writing and publishing articles on naval art, the main focus of which is on maneuvering in battle. At the same time, he taught a course in tactical navigation in the navigational classes of the Naval Academy. In 1916, he released The Tactical Navigation Course, the first textbook on maneuvering in battle.

Subsequently, Nikolai Nikolaevich Zubov became the head of the hydrological department of the Floating Marine Scientific Institute. The situation in which I had to work in those years required great enthusiasm, dedication, dedication, and faith in success. It is these qualities that made it possible to complete and equip Perseus and begin serious scientific research.

The first flight on the Perseus finally determined the life path of Zubov, became a explorer of the sea. In 1924 he published the first article on oceanology, and over the next nine years - more than thirty works. Among them are the “Bathymetric map of the Barents, Kara and White Seas”, “On the origin of the intermediate cold layer in polar waters”, “On the issue of ventilation of the bottom waters of the sea”. He made a particularly significant contribution to the study of Arctic sea ice, which represented the main obstacle to navigation by the Northern Sea Route.

In the same year, Nikolai Zubov was exiled to the city of Cherdyn in the Northern Urals, from where he returned only four years later. In 1930, he was arrested in the case of the "Industrial Party" and spent about a year in the overcrowded cell of the Butyrka prison in Moscow.

In 1930, the Moscow Hydrometeorological Institute was organized on the basis of the geophysical cycle of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. Zubov, who had become an employee of the institute from the first days, dreamed of creating a department of oceanology in it to train highly qualified marine experts. He managed to organize such a department in 1932, where he took the post of head.

In 1931, Nikolai Zubov was appointed scientific secretary of the Soviet National Committee for the Second International Polar Year. In 1932, for the first time in the history of Arctic navigation, on the small sailing-motor boat Nikolai Knipovich, circled the Franz Josef Land archipelago from the north. Published an article "Hydrological work of the Marine Scientific Institute in the southwestern part of the Barents Sea in the summer of 1928 on the Perseus e / s. This brochure was one of the first major domestic works on physical oceanology.

In 1934, Nikolai Nikolaevich was included in the Interdepartmental Bureau of Ice Forecasts. In 1935 he was the scientific director of a high-latitude expedition on the icebreaker steamer Icebreaker "Sadko". As a result of the expedition, for the first time it was possible to go beyond the limits of the continental shelf and carry out a comprehensive oceanological station in the deepwater part of the Arctic basin, the islands of the Invisible and the island of Ushakova were discovered. For this expedition, the professor was awarded a car.

In 1937, Zubov was approved to the degree of Doctor of Geographical Sciences without defending a dissertation, based on the totality of scientific works. In the spring of 1939, he conducted ice reconnaissance in the Kara Sea. For the winter campaign of 1941-1942 he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and the medal "For the Defense of the Soviet Arctic". Then he was appointed chief of staff of the icebreaking support detachment of the Belomorsky military flotilla. He predicted the timing of ice-breaking and ice breaking, supervised the organization of ice crossings across the Northern Dvina, planned the work of icebreakers for escorting transport ships with military cargo.

In the spring of 1943, Nikolai Nikolayevich Zubov, promoted to the rank of captain of the 1st rank, was recalled to Moscow and appointed assistant to the head of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route for research. In 1944, he took up the post of head of the State Oceanographic Institute. In May 1945, he was awarded the title of Rear Admiral Engineer.

In 1948, Zubov was invited to the Lomonosov Moscow State University as a professor in the Department of Hydrology. In 1953, a new department of oceanology was included, the position of the department head was offered to the professor, but unexpectedly refused to all. He spent the last years of his life as a professor at the Department of Oceanology, Faculty of Geography, Moscow University. He gave lectures on dynamic oceanology, sea tides, sea ice, sea currents. In 1960 he was awarded the honorary title "Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR."

Nikolai Nikolaevich Zubov died on November 11, 1960. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.