Svetlana Sychev

This essay presents information about the first women soil geographers - V. A. Bal’ts (1864-1943), Z. Yu. Shokal’skaia (1882-1960), E. N. Ivanova (1889-1973), N. N. Sushkina (1889-1975), and O. N. Mikhailovskaia (1894-?). These women were outstanding representatives of their field, and they made substantial contributions to the development of Russian science. All were born in the 19 th century, received higher education before the Revolution, and entered the developing and labor-intensive discipline of soil geography in the 1920s and 1930s. They held a passion for scientific knowledge, embarked on expeditions for fieldwork, and shared a disdain for worldly difficulties. They lived long lives, full of work, discovery, and travel, and they left behind a legacy in the subsequent generations of scientists.