Otto Yulyevich ShmidtBorn 30 Sep 1891; died 7 Sep 1956 at age 64.Soviet scientist and explorer responsible for the Soviet program of exploration and exploitation of Arctic resources; through his many activities he exercised a wide and diverse influence on Soviet life and thought. In 1937, on drifting ice near the North Pole, he established a scientific station notable for its oceanographic researches (1937). In the late 1940's he advanced a theory of the formation of the Earth from a rotating cloud of dust and gas. Schmidt led an expedition on the maiden voyage (1933) of the steamship Chelyuskin, which became ice-bound and went under in the Bering Strait. All the 111 scientists and crew members made it just in time to disembark the doomed vessel and, within a month, they were all ferried safely to the mainland. |
