An outstanding Russian geographer, oceanographer and cartographer Yuly Shokalsky was born in St. Petersburg on October 17, 1858. His mother, Ekaterina Ermolaevna Kern, daughter of Anna Kern, used to bring Yuly to Trigorskoye when he was a child. This estate is located three kilometers from Mikhaylovskoye estate. The boy's father died when Yuly was only nine years old. The son of Alexander Pushkin, Grigory, took part in his upbringing.
In 1877, Yuly graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps with the Nakhimov Prize in the rank of midshipman. From that point on, he was connected with the seas and education practically all his life. In the rank of midshipman, he entered the Nikolaev Naval Academy and, after graduating from it, he began to conduct scientific geographical research.
He wrote his first scientific papers on marine meteorology at the Main Physical Observatory. At the Naval Academy he taught mathematics, navigation and physical geography.
For more than half a century Yuly Shokalsky was an active member of the Russian Geographical Society, having risen from Secretary of the Department of Physical Geography to its Chairman and Honorary President. The world reputation of the Society was largely raised thanks to Yuly Shokalsky. His relations with famous scientists allowed him to invite Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, French polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot to the Russian Geographical Society.
Yuly Shokalsky spent four years exploring Lake Ladoga, he headed research of the Russian seas and the entire world's ocean at the Main Hydrographic Office. He commanded a complex expedition on the Black Sea that explored the physical oceanography and the ocean biology. It was Yuly Mikhailovich who introduced the concept of the “World Ocean.” Yuly Shokalsky received prizes from the Russian and Paris Academies of Sciences for his long scientific work, which he combined in his work titled “Oceanography” in 1917.
Yuly Shokalsky was elected an academician to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and awarded the title of Hero of Labor for his contribution to science. He became a member of the Washington Academy of Sciences, an honorary corresponding member of the Royal Geographical Society in London. There are islands and glaciers named after him. Yuly Shokalsky died on March 26, 1940 in Leningrad and was buried on the Literatorskie Mostki cemetery.
Photo: iakov / ru.123rf.com
Based on open sources
