Igor Akimushkin, a well-known domestic scientist, biology specialist, popularizer of science, author of scientific and educational books about the life of animals, which were incredibly popular in Soviet times, remain in demand today. We will tell about his biography and the most notable works in this article.
Writer Biography
Igor Akimushkin was born in 1929. He was born in Moscow. His father was an engineer who paid much attention to the development of his son. An increased interest in biology, the environment, and nature appeared in his early childhood.
In 1937, the hero of our article entered the capital's school. A few years later he began to attend a circle of naturalists at the capital's zoo. It was led by the Soviet teacher, naturalist and zoologist Petr Smolin, who brought up a whole generation of talented biologists and naturalists, among whom was Igor Akimushkin.
He graduated from the school after the war in 1947. At that time he was already 18 years old. Immediately after school, Igor entered Moscow State University, received his higher education at the Faculty of Biology and Soil.
Labor career
He graduated from university in 1952. By distribution, he ended up at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Then he began to conduct scientific activities, he wrote a dissertation on octopuses from the Pacific Ocean. After successful defense, he received the degree of candidate of biological sciences.
In 1963, Igor Akimushkin joined the Communist Party, which contributed to his career advancement. His work has been appreciated by the professional community. For example, in 1971 he was awarded the Knowledge Award established by the All-Union Knowledge Society.
In parallel with scientific work, he began to engage in literature, wrote fascinating books about nature and animals. In 1979 he was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers.
In 1993, Akimushkin died at the age of 63. His grave is in the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery.
The hero of our article was such a prominent figure in Soviet biology that in 1968 they even named a separate kind of squid in his honor.
Creative activity
During his literary career, Akimushkin wrote nearly a hundred scientific, artistic, children's and popular science works on animals.
His literary debut took place in 1961, when he published several of his books at once - “The Path of Legends: Tales of Unicorns and Basilisks”, as well as “Traces of Unseen Beasts”. They included rumors and legends about incredible and even fabulous animals, which as a result ended with discoveries in the scientific world of new species of animals.
The books of Igor Akimushkin were very popular among young readers, especially among schoolchildren, who not only had fun, but also gained new knowledge. Readers of his works were bribed with the simplest possible style of presentation, an exciting manner of narration.
About cats
For example, in the book “It's All Cats,” Igor Akimushkin tells the story of these unique animals in an intelligible way.
He always actively used foreign sources, which were unfamiliar and inaccessible to most Soviet schoolchildren and students. Thanks to this, Soviet readers first learned many facts about the animal kingdom and the environment precisely from the stories of Igor Akimushkin.
"Entertaining biology"
In the early 60s, Akimushkin began to publish his books with enviable regularity. An Entertaining Biology by Igor Akimushkin, “Where and How?”, Telling about the ability of animals to navigate in space, “First Settlers of the Sushi”, dedicated to arthropods, “The Tragedy of Wild Animals”, telling about species that are on the verge of extinction and problems, is being published their total extermination, "Freaks of nature", "Invisible threads of nature" about world ecology.
"Entertaining biology" is becoming one of his most visible works, which brings him fame and success. The author asks how it turns out that completely different species of animals and plants appear on the planet, despite the fact that everyone lives under the same sky, eat the same food, breathe the same air.
He is trying to tell in an accessible and interesting way how a person develops from one cell, when, and under what circumstances, life originated on Earth, from where people came from. Many often think about this and similar questions.
In his book, Akimushkin is accessible and simply talks about it in an entertaining way. Readers not only learn a lot of new things, but also make important and unexpected discoveries for themselves. A large number of drawings, original photographs make this book very easy to read.
A series of books about animals
The most famous is the six-volume series of books by Igor Akimushkin "Animal World". The first volume survived several reprints only from 1971 to 1975. Each book in this series was distinguished by a large number of photographs and an original design for that time, which made it popular and loved by many.
Igor Akimushkin himself worked on the unique design. The "Animal World" differed from other publications of a similar orientation in that the thematic drawings of Zhutovsky and Bloch were on specially left wide fields.
The text itself was printed in as large a font as possible, and all additional information and citations were in a much smaller font. In the early 80s, as part of this series, the light was already seen for the sixth time in which the author combined all the available fascinating information on pets.
Already in 1998 in Russia a reprint of the series "Animal World" was published. This time it was collected in four volumes, and was supplemented by parts about invertebrates. New color photographs appeared on the pages, while hand-drawn illustrations that were present in the first edition were excluded for the sake of brighter illustrations.
Films scripted by Akimushkin
In addition to scientific research and working with popular science books, Akimushkin takes part in creating scripts for scientific and documentary films, writes many books for the youngest children - this is “Who flies without wings?”, “There once lived a beaver”.
According to the Akimushkin script, more than five popular science films were released. In 1965, the painting "Lighthouses in the Sky" was released about the unique possibilities of birds in the field of navigation. Demonstrated experiments with insects and birds in the natural environment and laboratory conditions. A year later, the painting "To visit the octopus" was published with the subtitle "In the country of cephalopods."
After a short break in 1971, another picture appeared on the screens according to Akimushkin’s script entitled “In the Askania-Novaya Nature Reserve” about a unique biosphere reserve in the Kherson region on the territory of modern Ukraine. Here, visitors and spectators of this film can see antelopes, bison, llamas, zebras, Przhevalsky horses, flamingos, ostriches and many other animals exotic for these places.
In 1976, according to Akimushkin’s script, the film “Who Hides Like It” is released. This is a fascinating film for children and adolescents, which introduces them to the features of the animal world, birds and marine life. In 1979, in the film "Why Babiruss fangs?" the main characters are amazing mammals of the Babirusa pig family, at the same time the authors talk about penguins and chimpanzees.
Feature Film
In 1979, Akimushkin took part in the creation of a real feature film. Vadim Derbenev’s adventure film “Following the Lord’s Trail” about the first post-war winter, which takes place in the Ussuri taiga, comes out on Soviet screens. Beginning biologist Belov finds himself in a protected area, in which unique tigers still remain. He seeks to attract local residents to his side in order to defeat poachers.
The main roles were played by Yuri Belyaev, Vladimir Samoilov and Lyudmila Zaitseva.
The last picture according to the scenario of the hero of our article is the 1988 documentary "On the Trail of a Bigfoot ...". It talks about the origin of our species, as well as hypotheses and theories related to the existence of the Bigfoot.