Leonid Aleksandrovich Portenko (11 October 1896 – 26 May 1972) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

origin who carried out extensive

zoogeographic Zoogeography is the branch of the science of biogeography that is concerned with geographic distribution (present and past) of animal species. As a multifaceted field of study, zoogeography incorporates methods of molecular biology, genetics, mo ...

studies on the birds of the northern and north-eastern

Palaearctic realm The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

. He was born in

Smila, Ukraine Smila ( uk, Сміла ) is a city located on Dnieper Upland near the Tyasmyn River, in Cherkasy Raion, Cherkasy Oblast of Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Smila urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Climate Climate in the cit ...

, though most of his career was spent working in, and conducting expeditions from, the ornithological department of the Zoological Institute of the

Soviet Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. His publications include: * 1939, 1941 – ''Fauna of the Anadyr area'' * 1954, 1960 – ''The birds of the USSR'' * 1972–1973 – ''The birds of the Chukchi Peninsula and Wrangel Island'' * 1973 – ''Fauna of birds of non-polar parts of the Northern Urals'' * 1975 – ''The birds of zonal steppes and deserts of Central Asia''

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Further reading