ALEXANDER IVANOVICH RODYGIN. To the 100th Birthday

Alexander Rodygin was born on August 20, 1919 to a peasant family in the village Nowyi Poross of Tomsk province. He is a veteran of the Second World War. He was drafted into the Red Army in 1941 and served on the Far East, on Kamchatka, participated in the liberation of the Kuril Islands from the Japanese invaders. In 1950, he graduated with honors from Tomsk State University (TSU) with a degree in mineralogy and petrography. In 1956 he defended his PhD thesis, and in 1968, a doctoral thesis. Since 1969 he was a professor of the Department of Historical Geology, and in 1969-75 he was Dean of the Geological and Geographical Faculty. Since 1978 he was Head of the Paleontology and Historical Geology Department; since 1989 - professor of the same department. A.I. Rodygin conducted geological research on the Kuznetsk Alatau, Yenisei Ridge, Altai Mountains, Ore Mountains (GDR), Tuva, Transbaikalia, and Northern Ladoga. He discovered a number of ore deposits. The main scientific interests of A. Rodygin were stratigraphy, tectonics, metamorphism of the Precambrian units of the Altai-Sayan folded region and methods of structural analysis of complexly deformed complexes. He founded the scientific school of Structural-Tectonic Analysis, Petrology of Basement Complexes Two research laboratories on these themes are currently active at TSU. He was the author of more than a hundred scientific works, including 6 monographs, 10 textbooks. Alexander Ivanovich was one of the best lecturers at TSU, read a number of courses in structural and regional-geology (geology and minerals of the USSR, geotectonics, structural geology, microstructural analysis, analysis of complexly deformed complexes, Precambrian geology, etc.). Alexander Ivanovich enjoyed authority and international recognition. He was a holder of many government awards: medal of the Patriotic War II degree, and additional medals including "For the victory over Japan", "XX years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War", etc. He was an Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Honored Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation, Honored Subsoil Prospector, and Honored Professor of TSU. A. I. Rodygin was fond of painting, loved poetry. He read English and German literature in the original, and was engaged in translations. He met his future wife, Vera Rodygina (Izhetskaya) (1927-2011), in a student group, they were married in 1949 and were together for more than 60 years. They raised two children (son Sergei and daughter Elena), and three grandchildren (Vera, Polina and Sergei). Alexander Ivanovich passed away shortly after the death of his beloved wife, in August 2012.