We continue recounting the stories of the employees of the IEE RAS who participated in the Great Patriotic War.
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sveshnikov was born in Moscow in the family of an artist. In 1941 he entered the biology department of Moscow State University, which he graduated only in 1948, since in 1942 he went to the front. He took part in military operations on the Karelian Isthmus and in the south of Ukraine. In 1945, on the territory of Hungary, in battles against elite SS divisions, V. A. Sveshnikov was seriously wounded and was confined to a hospital bed for a year. For his exploits on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, V. A. Sveshnikov was awarded 17 military orders and medals.
He took his first steps in scientific work under the supervision of Professor L. A. Zenkevich, as well as Leningrad zoologists P. V. Ushakov and A. V. Ivanov. After graduating from the university, he worked at the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy of Invertebrates at Moscow State University, rising from assistant to professor. From 1975 until his death, V.A. Sveshnikov headed the laboratory at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology of Animals of the USSR Academy of Sciences. V.A. Sveshnikov is known for his studies of the morphology, biology and larval development of polychaete worms, as well as his works on the ecological morphology and life cycles of marine invertebrates. For many years, he taught courses in invertebrate zoology and invertebrate embryology at Moscow State University, conducted a large practical course, and taught students the basics of biological drawing and histology of invertebrates. V.A. Sveshnikov worked in the Higher Attestation Commission for more than 20 years, and many hundreds of zoologists received a start in science thanks to his attentive and invariably friendly attitude.