Lev Berg was born in
Bessarabia in a Jewish family, the son of Simon Gregoryevich Berg, a notary, and Klara Lvovna Bernstein-Kogan. He graduated from the Second Kishinev Gymnasium in 1894. Like some of his relatives, Berg converted to Christianity in order to pursue his studies at
Moscow State University. At Moscow University, Berg studied
hydrobiology and geography. He later studied ichthyology and in 1928 was awarded he was also a member of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. Lev Berg graduated from the
Moscow State University in 1898. Between 1903 and 1914, he worked in the Museum of Zoology in
Saint Petersburg. He was one of the founders of the Geographical Institute, now a Faculty of Geography of the
Saint Petersburg State University. Berg studied and determined the depth of the lakes of
Central Asia, including
Balkhash and
Issyk-Kul. He developed
Dokuchaev's doctrine of natural zones, which became one of the foundations of the Soviet biology. Among his pioneering monographs on
climatology were "Climate and Life" (1922) and "Foundations of Climatology" (1927). During his lifetime, Berg was a towering presence in the science of
ichthyology. In 1916, he published four volumes of the study of
Fishes of Russia. The fourth edition was issued in 1949 as
Freshwater Fishes of the Soviet Union and Adjacent Countries and won him the
Stalin Prize. He was said to have discovered the symbiotic relationship between
lampreys and
salmon. Berg's name is featured in the Latin appellations of more than 60 species of plants and animals. He spent the last two years of his life living in
Komarovo. He died on December 24, 1950 in
Leningrad. He was buried on the
Volkovo Cemetery. In 2001, the
Central Bank of Transnistria minted a silver coin honoring this native of today's
Transnistria, as part of a series of commemorative coins called
The Outstanding People of Pridnestrovie. ==Nomogenesis==