Nikolai Kudryavtsev

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kudryavtsev was a Soviet Russian petroleum geologist, born in Opochka in 1893, best known as the founding father of the modern abiogenic theory of petroleum, which holds that some oil forms from non-biological hydrocarbons deep in the crust and mantle. He graduated from the Leningrad Mining Institute in 1922, took a doctorate in geology and mineralogy in 1936, became a professor in 1941 and from 1929 to 1971 worked at the All-Union Geological Research Institute, VNIGRI. His regional studies led to discoveries of commercial oil and gas in the Grozny district, Central Asia and Timan-Pechora, and in 1947 he drew up the programme of key exploration wells in West Siberia that opened the way to Russian oil and gas production there, beginning with the Berezovo gas gusher of 1953. He proposed the abiotic hypothesis in 1951 and stated Kudryavtsev's rule on hydrocarbons at all depths in 1973. He died in Leningrad in 1971.