Dr. Tatyana Nikolaevna Kaplina died at the age of 83 years in Moscow at the end of August 2013. She was an outstanding specialist in the fields of Siberian permafrost and Quaternary environmental history. We finally met her in person in Moscow in 2011, but we had already benefited a great deal from her significant publications since we began joint Russian-German palaeo-environmental research in eastern Siberia in 1998.
As early as the 1960s and well into the 1980s, she published significant Russian-language works together with such internationally known scientists as N. N. Romanovskii, A.V. Sher and A.V. Lozhkin. There followed a hiatus of many years, during which period she cared for her aged mother. After retirement, Tatyana Nikolaevna returned to permafrost research, publishing brilliant papers that summarized her experience and knowledge of what has been done in the field. During that time, she studied contemporary international literature intensively, and was for us a key consultant. Valuable suggestions and constructive criticism improved many aspects of our ongoing work in arctic Siberia during recent years. Tatyana Nikolaevna not only followed international research activities with great interest, sharing her viewpoints and interpretations during intense discussions, she also spared no effort to make Russian scientific literature and other material available to the non-Russian science world.
We are happy that we had the opportunity to share Tatyana Nikolaevna’s experience and would have liked to have learned even more from her. We will miss her selfless nature and collegial enthusiasm.
Lutz Schirrmeister, Sebastian Wetterich, Anne Morgenstern, Frank Günther, Paul Overduin
(Potsdam, Germany)