Women at the dawn of diamond discovery in Siberia or how two women discovered the Siberian diamond province

Kiseeva, Ekaterina S.; Yuzmukhametov, Rishat N.

Women at the dawn of diamond discovery in Siberia or how two women discovered the Siberian diamond province

dc.contributor.author	Kiseeva, Ekaterina S.
dc.contributor.author	Yuzmukhametov, Rishat N.
dc.contributor.funder	Natural Environment Research Council	en
dc.date.accessioned	2020-09-01T11:09:15Z
dc.date.available	2020-09-01T11:09:15Z
dc.date.issued	2020-07
dc.date.updated	2020-09-01T09:21:08Z
dc.description.abstract	Exploration for diamonds in the Soviet Union started in the 1940s, however it was not until the beginning of 1950s that the government acknowledged a strong need for locally mined diamonds. In this article, based on publications from Russian literature, we recount a story of two female geologists, Larisa Popugaeva and Natalia Sarsadskhih. Natalia was the head of the mineralogical laboratory who implemented a new methodology to search for mineral indicators of primary diamond deposits. Larisa was a young geologist who joined Natalia's team in 1953. The work of these women led to the discovery in 1954 of the first diamond deposit in the country – a kimberlite pipe “Zarnitsa”. In 1954 Natalia was unable to go into the field, therefore the discovery was made by Larisa. Credit for this discovery, however, was claimed by the higher officials from the Amakinskaya expedition, one of the largest diamond exploration organisations in the country. Multiple efforts to restore justice did not succeed, with Larisa only being awarded the title of the “Discoverer” in 1970, and Natalia not until 1990. This article provides a description of Larisa's and Natalia's life up until the discovery of Zarnitsa, and a few significant events after.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	Natural Environment Research Council (NE/L010828/1)	en
dc.description.status	Peer reviewed	en
dc.description.version	Submitted Version	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.articleid	SP506-2020-11	en
dc.identifier.citation	Kiseeva, E. S. and Yuzmukhametov, R. N. (2020) 'Women at the Dawn of Diamond Discovery in Siberia or how Two Women Discovered the Siberian Diamond Province', in Celebrating 100 Years of Female Fellowship of the Geological Society: Discovering Forgotten Histories, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 506, pp. SP506-2020-11. doi: 10.1144/SP506-2020-11	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1144/SP506-2020-11	en
dc.identifier.eissn	2041-4927
dc.identifier.issn	0305-8719
dc.identifier.journaltitle	Geological Society Special Publications	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10468/10428
dc.identifier.volume	506	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	The Geological Society of London	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Celebrating 100 Years of Female Fellowship of the Geological Society: Discovering Forgotten Histories
dc.relation.uri	https://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2020/07/14/SP506-2020-11
dc.rights	© 2020 The Author(s). Published by The Geological Society of London. All rights reserved	en
dc.subject	Diamonds	en
dc.subject	Siberia	en
dc.subject	History of discovery	en
dc.subject	Kimberlite field	en
dc.title	Women at the dawn of diamond discovery in Siberia or how two women discovered the Siberian diamond province	en
dc.type	Article (peer-reviewed)	en