To keep the history from being impersonal: to the 155th anniversary of the birth of Professor A. P. Gerasimov

The article is devoted to the 155th anniversary of the birth of Professor A. P. Gerasimov (1869–1942), Secretary (1914–1935), Honorary Member (1940) and Chairman (1936–1942) of the All-Russian Mineralogical Society, who died in evacuation in Sverdlovsk. His letters, found in the archive of Professor D. P. Grigoriev, kept in the Russian Mineralogical Society, are published: to A.N. Krishtafovich from Petrograd to Vladivostok (05.05.1921), to D.P. Grigoriev from Essentuki to Sverdlovsk (26.03.1942), to relatives from Essentuki (07.06.1942), as well as an autobiography (01.06.1942), and obituaries from the newspaper «The Ural Worker» (12.11.1942). The letters show the living and working conditions of the Geological Committee in Petrograd during the Civil War and of the Leningrad Mining Institute in evacuation during the World War II. The aim of the article is to restore the history of domestic science as fully as possible. The article is aimed at historians of science, as well as teachers, graduate students and students of geological faculties of universities.