4 January 1935 – 4 December 2020
IN MEMORIAM
The distinguished marine biologist, Lev I. Moskalev, passed on the 4 December 2020 at the age of 85. The student of academician Lev A. Zenkevitch, Lev Moskalev began his scientific career in the legendary era of the Soviet RV Vityaz expeditions, the time of glorious discoveries in deep-sea oceanography.
Born and educated in Moscow, Lev graduated from the Moscow State University. He spent his first years in marine science (1957-1960) in the North, at the Biological Station Dal’niye Zelentsy on the Barents Sea coast. His entire life after that was linked with the Laboratory of Benthos (since 1983 – the Laboratory of Ocean Benthic Fauna) of the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow.
Lev worked in various fields of marine biology, however his main area always remained malacology. His PhD (1968) dealt with the systematics and zoogeography of the mollusc family Acmaeidae from the Pacific Ocean. In 1977 Lev conducted a world revision of the family Lepetidae (Gastropoda). Among his scientific interests was the mollusc class Monoplacophora, the fascinating example of the deep-sea “living fossils”. Among seven Recent monoplacophoran genera currently accepted three were established by Lev Moskalev. Altogether Lev described 16 new species and 14 new genera in the phyla Mollusca and Echinodermata. Fourteen animal species in various taxa were named after Lev in the recognition of his merits.
In the last period of his career Lev dealt with the hydrothermal vent fauna. In the Soviet Union Lev was among pioneers in this field and one of the first scientific observers in the deep diving manned submersibles Pisces and Mir. Lev spent in dives in total 200 hours, his deepest dive was at 5460 m. With more than 30 oceanographic cruises, mainly the deepsea, Lev spent at sea several years of his life.
Apart from marine science, Lev was a dedicated historiographer and the archive keeper. More than others he understood the importance of historical records for the continued development of science. The archive of Lev is a storage of unique historical documents, the real cultural heritage of the passing era of “heroic oceanography”. In 2005 Lev authored a popular science book “Masters of the Deep” describing some personalities and episodes in the history of ocean exploration.
Lev was involved in the research not only rationally but also passionately. We’ll cherish his stories about joint expeditions and meetings with legends of the deep-sea biology, many of them his friends – Lev Zenkevitch, Zinaida Filatova, George Belayev, Torben Wolff, Hjalmar Thiel, Eve and Allan Southward, Michael Türkay and others. Lev was a very hospitable host; many visitors of our lab remember with gratitude the happy time spent in his welcoming home.
We were really lucky to cross with Lev in our lives, to be friends with him and work together in marine science.
Colleagues from the Laboratory of Ocean Benthic Fauna,
P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Moscow
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