Kruger Valery Augustovich

(1890-1958)

Journalist

In 1913, he graduated from the natural sciences department of the physics and mathematics faculty of Kazan University. He was a student of renowned botanists such as A. Ya. Gordyagin and B. A. Keller[1]. He stayed at the university to prepare for a professorial degree. In 1915, he moved to the city of Semey. From 1919 to 1924, he taught botany at the Semey Institute of Public Education, while also working as a geobotanist in the Semey land plot. In 1924-1925, he was a lecturer and geobotanist at the Semey Pedagogical Technical School. From 1930 to 1934, he was an associate professor at the Omsk Dairy Institute, where he headed the botany department[2]. From 1934 to 1957, he served as the head of the Department of Plant Morphology and Systematics at Perm University for 23 years. Since 1934, he was a professor. In 1935, he was awarded the degree of Candidate of Biological Sciences based on a collection of works without defending a dissertation. While working in Siberia and Kazakhstan, V. A. Kruger showed interest in the plants of saline soils [3]. He was actively involved in the Semey branch of the Russian Geographical Society (1915-1916); at the request of the branch, he conducted geobotanical and limnological studies at Lake Gorky in the Zmeinogorsk district of Tomsk province, and also participated in several botanical expeditions in the Semey region, collecting a large herbarium. From 1930 to 1932, he worked as an assistant to the regional leader of the state land trust expeditions in Western Siberia; he conducted geobotanical studies in the Alei state farm. Between 1919 and 1924, he conducted geobotanical research in the southern part of the Karkaraly district (Kent mountains — northern shore of Lake Balkhash); around the Semey experimental site; and in the vicinity of Semey (stationary ecological observations). He participated in the Altai expedition from the Kazakh People's Commissariat (1924, Shyngystai volost; the materials collected during this expedition were processed at the herbarium of Tomsk University by P. N. Krylov; he participated in an expedition to Pavlodar district with I. V. Larin (1925).