Stepan Badalov

Stepan Tigranovich Badalov was born on 26 August 1919 in Chardzhou (now Türkmenabat, Turkmenistan) into a white-collar family. He spent his childhood in Kagan and Kokand.

In 1941 he graduated from the mining faculty of the Central Asian Industrial Institute in Tashkent, specialising in geology and the exploration of mineral deposits. When the Great Patriotic War began he joined the army and served until its end; according to biographical notes he fought, among other places, on the Stalingrad, 4th Ukrainian and Baltic fronts. For his service he received the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class, and medals.

After demobilisation, from 1 June 1946, he worked at the Institute of Geology of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR (later the Institute of Geology and Geophysics named after Kh. Abdullaev), first as a postgraduate student and then as head of the laboratory of geochemical cycles and processes. In 1950, under the supervision of Academician A. S. Uklonsky, he defended his candidate dissertation on the mineralogy of the Temir-Kabuk uranium-vanadium deposit on the northern slope of the Nurata Range. He defended his doctoral dissertation on the mineralogy, geochemistry and genesis of the endogenous deposits of the Almalyk ore district in 1962 and published a monograph on the subject in 1965. He became a professor in 1968.

With his students Badalov identified more than 50 minerals previously unknown in the Almalyk district; they include the new mineral berunite, and ayoite was found for the first time in the USSR. He also worked on applied problems, above all the comprehensive use of ores; in 1971 he received the diploma “Discoverer of a Deposit” for finding rare elements of practical importance in the Almalyk ores, and the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine began recovering some of them as by-products.

The scientist wrote hundreds of scientific papers, among them several monographs, edited issues of the “Notes of the Uzbek Branch of the All-Union Mineralogical Society”, supervised doctoral and candidate dissertations, and taught geochemistry and mineralogy at the geological faculty of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan).

In 1977 Badalov was named Honoured Science Worker of the Uzbek SSR, in 1988 he was awarded the USSR State Prize for taking part in creating a new mining raw-material base, and in 1992 he was elected an honorary member of the Russian Mineralogical Society. He was honorary chairman of the Mineralogical Society of Uzbekistan. The mineral badalovite, found on the Tolbachik volcano in Kamchatka, is named after him. Stepan Badalov died in Tashkent on 17 July 2014.