Konstantin Makarevich

Konstantin Grigorievich Makarevich (25 January 1922 - 17 June 2017) was a Soviet and Kazakhstani glaciologist.

He made a significant scientific contribution to the development and popularization of glaciology.

The first experience of climbing under the alpine camp "Tsvetmet" (now "Talgar") to the top of the Jubilee of 1B grade was committed in 1940, for which he was awarded the badge "Mountaineer of the USSR of I grade".

The completion of the technical school was interrupted by conscription to the army in October 1941.

Army training took place in the 20th Airborne Brigade on the territory of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (VGASSR).

Throughout the war, he passed his way from chemist to division commander.

He engaged in the battle of Moscow, the Battle of Kursk, the Battle of Königsberg.

He fought through Belarus, Poland, and East Prussia, and finished capturing Königsberg in the rank of lieutenant.

He participated in 13 raids on maintaining divisional reconnaissance groups.

He was awarded two Orders of the Red Star, two Second Class Orders of the Patriotic War, as well as other medals, such as "For the Capture of Königsberg".

After demobilization in 1946, he continued studies at the Ural State University in Sverdlovsk.

After graduation, he received a proposal to continue his studies at the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.

In 1946, after demobilization, he received an invitation to the position of an intern-instructor from the head of the alpcamp "Tsvetmet".

At the end of the mountaineering season every year he returned to Sverdlovsk for studies from 1948 to 1952.

During this time he made numerous ascents of different grade.

In Alma-Ata (Almaty), he established contacts with the Sector of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (now the Geography Institute of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan).

The first practical knowledge in glaciology was obtained during ascents.

Later, on the basis of the camp "Talgar" (former Tsvetmet), two sports&scientific expeditions were organized and conducted: one to the upper reaches of the Issyk Gorge (1950), the other to the glaciers of Right Talgar and Zharsaya (1952).

In 1950 a number of ascents on nameless peaks were conducted led by Konstantin, where one of the peaks was given the name of "Peak of Eighteen" in honor of the first eighteen pioneers, bearing this name until 1952, renamed "Kokbulak Peak".

He headed the Soviet glaciological expedition on the Tuyuksu glacier from 1956 to 1992 and was the founder of the Tuyuksu glaciological station.

For more than 20 years, he was as an official representative of the Soviet Union in the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).

He authored more than 200 scientific articles, monographs, regional and autobiographical books, and essays.

Two glaciers and two passes in the Trans-Ili and Dzhungarian Alatau are named after him.

He was a veteran of World War II, an order-bearer.

He was born in Shadrinsk, Kurgan Oblast.

His father worked as the chief technologist of the food industry and engaged in foreign trade deliveries, and his mother worked as an accountant-economist.

A few years later, the family moved to Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg).

He studied at the city school, then in the mining and metallurgical technical school, specializing in mineral processing.

There, he actively engaged in various sports and participated in the tourist-mountaineering club.

In March, 1956 he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the evaluation of melted waters of glaciers in the Lepsy River basin, calculating for the first time the regime characteristics of glaciers according to observations of the temperature regime at mountain weather stations.

From 1965 to 1974, he headed a research project within International Hydrological Decade (IHD) aimed at the mountain-glacial basin of Tien-Shan.

Throughout more than 40 years, he headed expeditions and the research within the frames of the various International Geophysical Projects and Programs of Glacier Fluctuations.

In the autumn of 1992, he took part in the glacial expedition for the last time.

In 2007, he published a book, "Methodological Aspects of Studies of Mass balance and Fluctuations of Mountain Glaciers", which is a short guide to the establishment and conduction of field observations and laboratory analysis of data.

The book of memoirs regarding the participation in the war was published in 2015, timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory in the World War II

Until 2015, when he was 94, he worked as a lead researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

He was married to Valentina Georgievna Starchenko for 66 years, and they had two children.

He died on 17 June 2017 at the age of 96.

He was buried in the city cemetery on Ryskulov Avenue in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Konstantin did more than thirty ascents, eight of which were conquered for the first time, remaining at that time as a "white spots" on topographic maps.