Ivan Yefremov

Ivan Antonovich (real patronymic Antipovich) Yefremov (Russian: Ива́н Анто́нович (Анти́пович) Ефре́мов; 23 April 1908 – 5 October 1972; last name sometimes transliterated as Efremov) was a Soviet paleontologist, science-fiction author and social thinker. He founded taphonomy, the study of fossilization patterns. He was born in the village of Vyritsa in Saint Petersburg Governorate on 23 April 1908. His parents divorced during the Russian Revolution. His mother married a Red Army commander and left the children in Kherson to be cared for by an aunt who soon died of typhus. Yefremov survived on his own for some time, after which he joined a Red Army unit as a "son of the regiment" and went to Perekop with it. In 1921, he was discharged and went to Petrograd (today's Saint Petersburg) to study. He completed his education there while combining his studies with a variety of odd jobs. He later commented that "the Revolution was also my own liberation from philistinism" ("Революция была также и моим освобождением от мещанства").