Among the outstanding scientists-geographers of our Motherland, prof. Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin holds a special place of honor. He can be put on a par with such scientists as I. M. Sechenov, A. G. Stoletov, V. V. Dokuchaev, K. A. Timiryazev and others.
On August 10, 1948, in connection with the 25th anniversary of Anuchin's death, the Soviet government issued a special decree to perpetuate the memory of the scientist. In this important document for the history of science, Anuchin is called "the largest Russian geographer, the founder of the Russian university geographical school."
Dmitry Nikolayevich was the first Russian geographer who brought the teaching of geography in secondary and higher schools to the modern scientific level.
For the first time at Moscow University, on the initiative of Anuchin, who headed the department of geography, geographers with higher university education began to be trained. The teachers he brought up made geography an interesting and exciting subject in high school.
Dmitry Nikolaevich was born in 1843 in St. Petersburg. His father, Nikolai Vasilyevich Anuchin, was a soldier in Kutuzov's army.
Having learned to read and write early, Mitya Anuchin read a lot. In 1854 he entered the gymnasium. Among the teachers were advanced people for that time and talented educators. The teaching of the Russian language and literature, natural science and geography was well established in the gymnasium. Anuchin enjoyed learning Russian. He liked to write essays and dictations, as well as engage in grammar analysis. He also tried to compose poetry and prose - novels and comedies. For the rest of his life, interesting lessons in natural science were preserved in the memory of Dmitry Nikolayevich. The teacher, showing plants and animals, talked about them in a fascinating way. No less interesting were the geography lessons. In his first diary, which Anuchin kept in the second grade of the gymnasium, he wrote: “Of all the sciences, I loved geography most of all ... I especially loved geography with adventures.”
Having successfully graduated from the gymnasium, Anuchin, after much deliberation, chose the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. Not having finished the first year, he was forced to interrupt classes due to illness. On the advice of doctors, the parents sent Dmitry Nikolaevich abroad to more favorable climate places.
Returning to Russia, he entered Moscow University. At the end of his Anuchin decided to devote himself to scientific work. But in tsarist Russia the path to science was not easy even for capable and talented youth.
Surviving by odd jobs, Dmitry Nikolaevich stubbornly independently engaged in zoology, a new science at that time - anthropology and geography.
In 1871, Anuchin entered the post of scientific secretary at the Moscow Zoological Garden, which was then in complete disrepair. Energetically getting down to business, Dmitry Nikolayevich replenished the garden with rare African, Central Asian and Siberian animals. On the materials of observations of animals in the zoological garden, he wrote his first scientific works.
Soon Moscow University instructed Anuchin to give a course of lectures on anthropology. To study the teaching of this science, the university sent him to Germany, France and England. There, the young scientist listened to lectures of professors, visited museums.
Two and a half years later, Anuchin returned to his homeland and began to teach students a course in anthropology.
In 1882, Dmitry Nikolaevich traveled around Dagestan, where he explored caves, looking for traces of a Stone Age man in them. Moving through the hard-to-reach mountains on foot or on horseback, Anuchin visited remote villages of Dagestan, lost in the mountains. Here he studied the life and life of local peoples.
In 1885 Anuchin began lecturing university students on geography. From that time on, he devoted all his activities to the creation of scientific geography in Russia, the training of teachers and scientists capable of successfully developing geographical science in the future.
Every year his lectures attracted more and more students who wanted to get a degree in geography. Anuchin's students were prominent geographers: Acad. L. S. Berg, professors A. A. Borzov, A. S. Barkov, A. A. Kruber, M. S. Vodnarsky, M. A. Bogolepov, S. V. Chefranov, S. G. Grigoriev, B F. Dobrynin and others.
In 1890, Anuchin was elected president of the Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography. In the same year, he organized a geographical department within this Society, which was supposed to promote the development of geographical science in Russia.
In the summer of the same year, Anuchin went on an expedition to the Valdai Hills. Here he studied the region of the sources of the Volga, the Western Dvina and the Dnieper.
Before Anuchin's expedition, the Valdai Upland was depicted incorrectly on maps. Anuchin refined the map, established the correct outlines of the lakes, measured the depth and found out the origin of the lake basins.
These works of his laid a new branch of science in Russian geography - the doctrine of lakes, or limnology.
Together with members of the geographical branch of the Society of Natural Science Lovers, Anuchin founded the geographic journal Earth Science, which soon united geographers, travelers, teachers and lovers of geography.
In 1896 Anuchin was elected to the academician. He worked hard and created a number of outstanding scientific works: on various peoples, earthquakes, volcanoes, lakes, floods, on the forms of the earth's surface, etc.
In 1915, under the chairmanship of Anuchin, a congress of teachers of geography met in Moscow, which developed new programs in geography for secondary schools.
In Soviet times, Anuchin lectured, organized the Research Institute of Geography and Anthropology at Moscow University, and created a geographical museum.
When the question arose of creating the first Soviet Atlas of the World, V. I. Lenin pointed to D. I. Anuchin and his closest student A. A. Borzov as the most prominent geographers who should be involved in this work.
Anuchin passionately loved his homeland. His works strongly emphasized the close connection of geography with the national economy, with the practical activity of man.
His last work was devoted to the life and work of the Russian traveler Miklouho-Maclay.
Anuchin wrote a biography of the traveler and prepared some of his manuscripts and diaries for publication.
Anuchin died in 1923 at the age of 80. One of the highest volcanoes on the Kuril Islands, a glacier in the northeast of Siberia, is named after him. For the best work in geography, Moscow University annually awards a prize to them. D. N. Anuchin, and for the more capable, who showed success in science, graduate students and students of the Faculty of Geography, the Soviet government established scholarships named after him.
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