Frumenty Abakumov

Frumenty Nikolayevich Abakumov was born on 13 December 1915 (30 November in the Old Style) in the village of Prishib, Yenotayevsk uyezd of Astrakhan Governorate; the place now lies in Russia’s Astrakhan Oblast. He graduated from Leningrad University in 1939.

From 1940 to 1942 he worked in the field parties of the Geological Administration of the Uzbek SSR. In 1942 the Lenin District military commissariat of Tashkent called him up. At the front he served as assistant head of the first section of the staff of the 120th (Gatchina) Rifle Division; he was wounded in January 1943 and demobilised in 1945. For his service he received the Order of the Red Star (1944) and two Orders of the Patriotic War (1945).

After the war he worked as a hydrogeologist in Uzbekistan, and from 1947 he took part in the search for and exploration of uranium deposits in the Central Asian republics. He was chief geologist and party leader in 1950–1954, chief engineer in 1954–1955, and from 1955 to 1989 party leader, geologist and senior geologist of the Krasnokholm geological exploration expedition.

Abakumov was a member of the group that discovered the Uchkuduk uranium deposit, on which the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combine was later built. For this discovery he shared the Lenin Prize of 1959 with his colleagues.

In 1986 he received another Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class. He retired on 2 October 1989. No reliable information on the date or place of his death has been found.