Tanfilev, Gavriil

Tanfilev, Gavriil [Танфилев, Гавриил], b 6 March 1857 in Revel (now Tallinn, Estonia), Estland gubernia, d 4 September 1928 in Odesa. Geographer, botanist, and soil scientist. He graduated from Saint Petersburg University in 1883. In 1905 he was appointed a professor at Odesa University, where he organized a geography department and later helped create an agricultural institute. In Odesa he presided over the New Russia Society of Naturalists from 1911 and headed the natural history department of the Odesa Gubernia Agricultural Station (1918–26). Tanfilev continued the work of his teacher, Vasilii Dokuchaev. He studied the geography of marshes (notably in the Polisia region) and the relationship between soil and vegetation. He attributed the treelessness of the steppe to the salinity of the soil and subsoil caused by the dry climate. He developed one of the first physical-geographic regionalization schemes for European Russia (1897) and the entire Russian Empire (1903) and wrote the four-volume Geografiia Rossii (Geography of Russia, 1916–26).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]