User:1Vicky1/Maria Mikhailovna Kononova

Maria Mikhailovna Kononova (August 18, 1898, Orenburg — February 20 1979, Moscow) — Russian scientist, specialist in soil organic matter. Doctor of biological sciences, laureate of the USSR State Prize (1968).

Biography
After graduating from the women's gymnasium (1917), she studied at the Voronezh Agricultural Institute (1917-1918). She first worked at the biological department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Central Asian University (1921-1925) and later in the graduate school at the Department of Plant Physiology and Microbiology (1925-1928).

Later, between 1926 and 1932 she worked as a microbiologist at the Ak-Kavak experimental station.

Beginning 1932 she worked at the V.V. Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute where she later became the head of the laboratory of soil biochemistry (1946-1976).

In 1935, without defending a dissertation, she was awarded the scientific degree candidate of agricultural sciences. In 1943, she defended her doctoral dissertation titled: "Organic matter of soils of dry steppes of the Trans-Volga region and the processes of its transformation in the conditions of irrigated agriculture". In 1946 she became Professor of Biochemistry.

Publications

 * Monographs

- «The problem of soil humus and modern problems of its study» (1951), for which she was awarded the V.V.Dokuchaev Prize in 1952.

- ''«Soil organic matter. Its nature, properties and methods of study»'' (1963).

For these books she was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1968. The monographs were published in England (1961, 1966), the German Democratic Republic (1958), Poland (1955, 1968), Japan (1963, 1976), and the PRC (1956).

In 1975 she published the book "Humus of natural and developed soils".

Awards

 * Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1953)
 * USSR State Prize (1968)
 * V.V. Dokuchaev Prize (1952)