This man is known to readers as a science fiction writer. The fact that Ivan Efremov was engaged in paleontology is known only to specialists in this sector of scientific research. The scientist created literary works on the basis of information received during expeditions.
Starting conditions
Ivan Antonovich Efremov did not immediately become interested in paleontology. If we use the terminology of astrologers, then the stars that determine his fate were formed into constellations slowly and unpredictably. The future researcher of antiquities and science fiction writer was born on April 22, 1907 in the family of a manufacturer. Parents at that time lived in the village of Vyritsa, located not far from St. Petersburg.
My father owned a sawmill. The mother was engaged in raising children and running a household. Ivan turned out to be the eldest child. The younger brother and sister grew up in the house. Already at an early age, he showed the ability to independently study the world around him. At the age of four he learned to read, and at the age of six he was already "studying" the novels of the French science fiction writer Jules Verne. Before the outbreak of the First World War, the Efremov family moved to the town of Berdyansk in Ukraine. After the October Revolution of 1917, the family broke up, and Ivan was brought up by his aunt, who lived in Kherson.
The path of trials and discoveries
Suddenly, my aunt died of typhus. For three years Efremov had to live in the conditions of the Civil War. He was admitted to the automobile battalion of one of the units of the Red Army. During the assault on the digging, the young driver was concussed. As a result of the injury, Ivan began to stutter slightly. In 1921 he returned to Petrograd with the intention of receiving a fundamental education. Two years later, he received a diploma of a navigator of coastal navigation and left for the Far East. Navigator Efremov spent two navigations in the Pacific Ocean. And only after this period he entered the biological department of the Leningrad University.
And from that moment on, the young thinker began to converge with the science of paleontology. Efremov regularly, usually in the summer, goes on expeditions. The routes of movement of prospectors run through the Urals, the Volga region, Siberia, the Far East and other regions. On expeditions, the scientist not only collects data for scientific articles, but also writes works of fiction based on real facts, events and incidents. In 1935, Efremov was awarded the title of candidate of biological sciences.
Recognition and privacy
Ivan Antonovich Efremov is the founder of a science called Taphonomy. In fact, this is the doctrine of the preservation of the remains of prehistoric animals in the ground. For this theory he was awarded the Stalin Prize. As a writer, Efremov gained worldwide fame after the publication of the novels "The Andromeda Nebula" and "Hour of the Bull".
The personal life of the writer and scientist has developed ambiguously. He was married three times. In the second marriage, a son was born, who was named Allan. Ivan Efremov died in October 1972 from acute heart failure.
