Obituary of Kirill Yakovlevich Kondrat’ev

Famous Russian academician Kirill Yakovlevich Kondrat’ev died 1 May 2006 at the age of 86. His death brought a sorrow to the hearts of his family, colleagues, and students nationwide and internationally. Kondrat’ev’s life was remarkable for the longevity and depth of his scientific and educational endeavors as well as his amazing productivity. His scientific contribution includes more than 1,200 scientific papers and more than 100 books, which have been translated into many different languages. Also, with his advanced knowledge of English he demonstrated enormous productivity promoting important western scientific publications among Russian scientists by writing numerous reviews.

Kondrat’ev began his scientific career the year following World War II in 1946, when he graduated from the Physics Department of the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University. The war had interrupted Kirill’s university education and thrown him onto the battlefields where he was wounded on three different occasions. Hospitals, starvation, and difficulties of the Leningrad’s siege were parts of his youth.

After graduation, Kirill was invited to remain at the university, and in 1950 he wrote his first book. In 1958 he became a full professor, and in 1964 he was elected head of the university. Kondrat’ev remained in his position as head of the most prestigious and credential Russian educational institution, successfully defining directions of scientific and educational activities of the university, for 14 years.

Kondrat’ev’s scientific career was strongly influenced by the explorations resulting from the satellite era. Satellite remote sensing and applications thereof became the main focus of Kirill’s scientific research. From 1958, while still heading the university, he led research on the atmospheric radiative processes in the Main Geophysical Observatory. While there he organized a several important national programs (with international participation) for synchronized data collection from satellites and aircrafts and for development of instruments and methods for retrieval of atmospheric aerosol, ozone, and water vapor vertical profiles.

In 1982, Kirill added another leadership achievement to his growing list when he was appointed head of ecological research at the St. Petersburg’s Lake Research Institute (LRI), a position he held until 1992. During this time he continued his research related to remote sensing, extending it to monitoring the dynamics of the lake surfaces, water quality, and pollution. He organized a number of important national and international expeditions to the Russian lakes pushing forward development of the numerical methods for retrieval of the water optical characteristics using satellite measurements of the surface brightness.

Being at LRI promoted Kirill’s understanding of the world’s ecological situation, and he became increasingly more involved in the problems of the global environmental changes. Working closely with scientists from different disciplines, Kondrat’ev became very concerned with the state of the environmental equilibrium. He turned his efforts toward applying remote sensing methods to the problem of detecting small changes in this equilibrium. His primary approach was to look for “thin” places where a small change in the equilibrium could bring catastrophic changes to whole system. His work directly pointed to one of the “thin” places-a fragile relationship between economical human activities and the recent state of the biosphere. He called for creating a global monitoring system, which would include worldwide coordination, cooperation, and optimization of all existing monitoring systems.

Beginning in 1992, Kondrat’ev’s scientific activities were pursued at the Centre of the Ecological Security of the Russian Academy of Science where he was promoting his ideas of the global monitoring system. Continuing until his death this year, he was an adviser on ecological security for the Russian Academy of Science. The fall of the Soviet Union, reorganization of Russian science, a dramatic reduction of funds for scientific research in Russia, and the thinning of Russian scientific potential greatly slowed the pace at which Kondrat’ev’s ideas were implemented. In spite of these difficulties Kondrat’ev stayed scientifically active until his very last day pursuing what he had started 60 years ago.

With the death of Kirill Yakovlevich Kondrat’ev the scientific world has lost another great voice and researcher. However, we will always remember his bright eyes, warm and enthusiastic voice, and respectful manners and will continue to admire his infinite energy and his life work toward making the world better.