Fluent in Russian, he wrote in Estonian, German, Czech, French and English.įollowing the Soviet army advance into Estonia in 1944, Öpik and his family left the country. By 1944 he had written seventy-five scientific papers on palaeontology and fossil life forms, although he virtually ignored molluscs and cephalopods. Having gained extensive field experience in the geology of the older Palaeozoic rocks of northern and central Europe, he joined the 1937 Danish expedition to Greenland, led by Lauge Koch. He was appointed Estonian laureate of science in 1935.
Between 19 he was president of the university’s naturalists’ society, editor of the journal Eesti Loodus and a member of the Estonian geological committee that advised the department of mines on economic geology (engineering, minerals, oil and water). That year he became professor of geology and palaeontology, and director of the Tartu Geological Institute and Museum. In 1930 he gained international recognition as a palaeontologist when he produced a major monograph on brachiopods from the unusual, extremely fossiliferous, oil shale and limestone beds of middle Ordovician age in Estonia. Granted the title of privatdozent in 1929, he was appointed lecturer in geology and mineralogy at Tartu. He graduated magister mineralogiae (1926) and doctor philosophiae naturalis (1928). His first papers, published in 1925, dealt with the detailed palaeogeography of Estonian rocks of Cambrian and Ordovician age, including the study of the extraordinary unconsolidated ‘Blue Clay’ of early Cambrian age. In the 1920s he studied geology and mineralogy in the faculty of mathematics and natural history at Tartu University, Estonia. Aged 20, he married Varvara (Barbara) Potashko (d.1977). In World War I he enrolled at Moscow University, before enlisting as an artillery cadet. During a period of economic hardship he sold his 1917 graduation gold medal to buy food for his family.Īdopting an interest in fossils from his eldest brother, Öpik disappointed his father by choosing to study geology (‘closer to the devil’), instead of becoming a Lutheran pastor. His early schooling was disrupted because of a speech impediment but later at the Nicolai Gymnasium he became an outstanding pupil, excelling in athletics and wrestling. Armin’s father was a strict disciplinarian whose influence was balanced by his mother she taught the children languages, music and art. Armin Aleksander Öpik (1898–1983), palaeontologist, was born on 24 June 1898 at Lontova, near Kunda, Estonia, youngest surviving son of Karl Heinrich Öpik, harbourmaster, and his wife Leontine Johanna, née Freiwald.
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