Prof. Mark Berdichensky: 2 April 1923 - 11 August, 2009

Mark Berdichevsky

From: Nikolay Palshin palshin@ocean.ru
Subject: Mark Berdichensky
Date: 11 August 2009

Dear colleagues,

On August 11th Professor of Geophysical Department of Geological Faculty of the Moscow State University Mark Berdichevsky passed away. Mark Berdichevsky is well-known in our country and worldwide as a leading scientist in geoelectrics.

Mark Berdichevsky was born on April 2nd 1923 to the family of a Professor of the Polytechnic University in Kiev. Mark Berdichevsky was World War II veteran.

After the War he entered the Geological Faculty of the Moscow State University. After graduating from the University in 1949 he worked for 20 years in the Research Institute of Geophysical Prospecting Methods. From 1969 he has been Professor of the Geological Faculty of the Moscow State University.

Under Mark Berdichevsky’s guidance magnetlotelluric methods of studies the Earth crust and the upper mantle have been elaborated and translated into the practice of geophysical prospecting. About 400 of his scientific publications promoted greatly wide application of these methods in prospecting of natural resources on the territory of Russia and abroad.

Mark Berdichevsky ranked among the best professors who shared his vast knowledge and extensive practice with students, post graduates and colleagues. Under his supervising dozens of PhDs theses were successfully defended. Mark Berdichevsky contributed greatly to the organization of science, improvement of the studying process. Numerous workshops on EM studies, Working Group Meetings, Conferences, Methodological Councils, Editorial Boards is just a few things to mention, that Mark Berdichevsky dedicated his efforts and time. We kept working till the last moment preparing for publication a academic course "Field theory", which his was brilliantly presented for many years attracting students to magnetotellurics.

Mark Berdichevsky had encyclopedic knowledge, he loved poetry and he wrote nice poems himself…

We are planning to arrange during IAGA Scientific Assembly in Sopron a church organ music in memory of Ulrich Schmucker, Peter Weidelt and Mark Berdichevsky on Friday noon. Scientific Session I06 “Crustal tectonic processes constrained by electromagnetic observations” will be memorial (special thanks to Laszlo Szarka and T. Harinarayana).

On behalf of Russian EM community
Nikolay Palshin


Photographs of Mark

EM Workshop photographs with Mark in them:

Other photographs of Mark:


Comments/reminiscences from Mark's colleagues and friends

John Booker

I am sorry to hear this. We have now lost three of the giants in our field within a year. Mark was very warm and helpful to me personally and always had penetrating questions, followed by good advice.

My best memory of him was at the Sochi workshop. At teatime he came up to me, took my elbow and said quietly into my ear: "John you must come with me". A little concerened that maybe I had done something that had offended the authorities, I went with him a little nervously back into the auditorium. He took me to the front where Akad. Tikhonov was standing and as we walked up to him he said "Akademician Tikhonov wants to meet you and give you an original reprint of the first paper in MT". I was stunned. First, I had no expectation that Tikhonov had any idea who I was and second that he would part with such a rare object. Obviously Mark had something to do with this.

I will miss Mark very much, but will always carry fond memories of him.

Hari

My best memory of Prof. Berdechevsky is his book on telluric methods. I followed like a Bible and motivated me to enter and stick on to magnetotellurics.

During our visit to Moscow we (myeself and Dr. Saurabh Verma) planned to meet him at his office in Moscow and took an appointment. We want to pay our respects. Prof. Berdechevsky made it as a formal meeting arranged snacks, tea, sweets etc. to us and asked all his group members to be there to meet us. We just surprised to see such a senior professor, whom we never met before and we dont have a big business with him took so much interest and coming in a nice formal dress for meeting us and also showing all the research work of his students and him...

Then we realized that is his personality.. Big or small he treats them alike... This lesson we learned from him..

Alan Jones

I first met Mark at the 1976 Sopron EM Workshop. He was one of the EM "gods" that I held in awe. Rosemary Hutton introduced us to each other, and he was pleasantly interested in hrearing from a very novice MT student about my new observations in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. That workshop, especially the openness and gentleness of those gods, defined for me just how science should be conducted.

I well remember one humourous incident at that workshop when a speaker made the grave mistake of going well over time when Mark was the session chairman. After repeated requests by Mark to the speaker to conclude, Mark walked up on stage right, across to stage left where the overhead projector was located, and pushed the speaker off the stage and said "The next talk is....". Clearly Mark knew the speaker, and was adding his own special brand of humour to keep the workshop rolling along.

Last year at the 3DEM workshop in Freiberg one of his colleagues gave me a special message from him - it was his "MT Interpretation Catechism". Basically the approach he thought one should take for 2D MT interpretation. I was hoping to discuss this with him in detail next time we met...

Zhao Ghoze

We are deeply grieved for the loss of Prof. Berdichevsky. Prof. Berdichevsky was a famous scientists for his great contribution on geo-electricity studies etc. Many of the scientists and technicians of Chinese EM community have got the help from his research. He visited china several times and gave the lectures illustrating his idea on his study for MT theory and the practice. He visited us in 1994 and joined the 3rd China International Geo-electromagnetic Workshop. His reports left us very deep impression.

Please give our regards to his family and his colleagues.