Tatyana Ivanovna Ustinova (November 14, 1913,

Alushta Alushta (Ukrainian language, Ukrainian and Russian language, Russian: ; ; ) is a city of regional significance on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula which is within the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a region internationally recognised as ...

— September 4, 2009,

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

geologist, who discovered

Valley of Geysers The Valley of Geysers () is a geyser field on Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, and has the second-largest concentration of geysers in the world. This basin with approximately ninety geysers and many hot springs is situated on the Kamchatka Peninsula ...

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

Biography

Tatyana Ustinova graduated from

Kharkiv University The V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (), also known as Kharkiv National University or Karazin University, is a public university in Kharkiv, Ukraine. It was founded in 1804 through the efforts of Vasily Karazin, becoming the second old ...

and subsequently worked on projects in the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

and Reserve Ilmen. In 1940 she was transferred to the

Kronotsky Nature Reserve Kronotsky (Кроноцкий) Nature Reserve (also: ''Kronotsky Biosphere Zapovednik'') is a Russian zapovednik (strict nature reserve) reserved for the study of natural sciences in the remote Russian Far East, on the coast of the Kamchatka Pen ...

in Kamchatka together with her husband, Yury Averin. In April 1941, while accompanied by the

Itelmen The Itelmens (; ) are an Indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family, but it is now virtually extinct, the vas ...

guide Anysyfor Pavlovich Krupenin, she found the Valley of Geysers. This was a major geological discovery as, prior to this, geysers were only known in Iceland, New Zealand, and the United States. Ustinova named the first geyser in Kamchatka ''Pevenets'', Russian for "firstling". Until 1946 Ustinova remained on the Kamchatka peninsula, researching the Valley of Geysers; her description of the geysers' eruptions and their locations was the basis of her master's thesis. She gave the names to the most powerful and impressive

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a Spring (hydrology), spring produced by the emergence of Geothermal activity, geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow ...

s there. Later on she worked in Chişinău. In 1951, she published a book, ''Geysers of Kamchatka''. In 1989, Ustinova left her homeland to live in Canada along with her eldest daughter, Tatyana, and she died there on September 4, 2009.

Death

Following Ustinova's testament, her ashes were buried in Valley of Geysers on August 5, 2010, 11 months and 2 days after her death.

References

1913 births 2009 deaths Soviet geographers Soviet explorers National University of Kharkiv alumni People from Alushta {{geographer-stub