- published: 25 Apr 2014
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Pyotr Petrovich Shirshov (Russian: Пётр Петрович Ширшов) (December 25 (O.S. December 12), 1905, Ekaterinoslav (today Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) - February 17, 1953, Moscow) was a Ukrainian Soviet oceanographer, hydrobiologist, polar explorer, statesman, academician (1939), and Hero of the Soviet Union (1938).
Pyotr Shirshov graduated from the Odessa Public Education Institute in 1929. In 1929-1932, he was a researcher at the Botanical Garden of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1932-1936, Pyotr Shirshov was employed as a researcher at the All-Union Arctic Institute. He participated in numerous Arctic expeditions, including the ones on icebreakers Sibiryakov (1932) and Chelyuskin and a drifting ice station North Pole-1 (1937-1938). In 1942-1948, Pyotr Shirshov was People's Commissar (later Minister) of the Soviet Maritime Fleet. In 1946-1953, he headed the Institute of Oceanology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which he had established himself. In 1946-1950, Pyotr Shirshov chaired the Pacific Ocean Science Committee.