Emeritus Professor of Nematology, Dr. Biol. Sci. Ekaterina S. Kirjanova, the oldest and most eminent plant nematologist in the U.S.S.R. died unexpectedly of a heart attack at home in Leningrad on December 17, 1976 at the age of 76.
        She was born at Vernyi (now Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan on December 3, 1900. After finishing at a girls' school she taught for 2 years and then joined the Middle Asian State University in Tashkent. There from 1926 she was successively a laboratory assistant and lecturer of Biology and Parasitology.
        E. S. Kirjanova moved to Leningrad in 1930 as a post-graduate student and in 1934 received her Candidate of Biol. Sciences degree for publications on plant and soil nematodes without dissertation. Dr. Kirjanova had joined the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. as a research worker in 1933. Including her post-graduate study, she was active at this Institute continuously for 46 years to her death. She was promoted to the academic rank of senior research worker in 1940 and was awarded a Doctor of Biol. Sci. degree in 1962.
        Dr. Kirjanova's research was mainly concerned with systematics and ecology of free-living and plant parasitic nematodes, but she was also greatly interested in entomophilic nematodes and hairworms: she was the author or co-author of some 170 scientific papers and several books.
She described 100 new species of nematodes and hairworms. Twenty-five dissertations were supervised and written under her guidance. She assembled a nematode collection of 50000 slides and of 4000 fixed samples as well as a hair-worm collection of 3000 samples. It is unique in the U.S.S.R. and without doubt must constitute one of the greatest nematode and hairworm collections in the world.
        During her last years, Dr. Kirjanova spent most of her time and energy on editorial work. She was the Editor of a series of monographs entitled "Keys to plant, soil and insect nematodes". Three books in this series have been published and a number of other books are still in print.
Soviet nematologists celebrated Dr. Kirjanova's 75th birthday with a scientific conference in Leningrad in February 1976. In September, she was Chairman of one of the Sections in the 8th All-Union Conference of nematode diseases of agricultural crops in Kishinev, Moldavia. She remained active and worked inten-sively and with great energy until her death. She will be greatly missed by all nematologists.