Geologist Yurii Dovgal, a researcher of the Karadag volcano in the Crimea, Ukraine (to the 100th anniversary of his birth)

The article is devoted to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yurii Mykhailovych Dovgal (1925–1988), an outstanding geologist of the Soviet era. A survey of his biographic information revealed that the researcher participated in the Second World War. He graduated from the geological faculty of Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv in 1954. Later, he worked in areas the geology of which had been little studied, such as in Magadan Oblast (1956–1967) and in Afghanistan (1967–1971). From 1971 until his death, Y. Dovgal worked as a scientist in the Institute of Geological Sciences at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He was mentored by the prominent geologist V. G. Bondrachuk, who also supervised his doctoral thesis for the degree of candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences, which he earned in 1975. Geologist Y. M. Dovgal was a global thinker. When studying a particular geological object and when analysing research results, he always applied a critical and a comparative approach, involving a large body of data from both close and distant but related territories of the globe, as well as various methods of generalisation in order to produce his own novel views supported by additional original theoretical developments. The study of the Karadag volcano was closely related to the concept of the modern Azov–Black Sea geosyncline (Northern Black Sea region) developed by Y. M. Dovgal, V. S. Tokovenko and others. This concept provided a framework to re-evaluate the traditional views on the age of igneous formation of Karadag and the Crimean Mountains. In 1981–1987, Y. M. Dovgal, V. Y. Radzivil, V. S. Tokovenko, and V. S. Cherniavskyi (all of whom represented the Ukrainian geotectonic school led by V. G. Bondarchuk) carried out complex geological studies of the Karadag massif. It was proved that the age of vulcanites is Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous. In general, this research took a prominent place in the more than 200-year history of geological studies of the Karadag. The results were also used in studies of other tectonic igneous formations of Ukraine. The ideas of Y. M. Dovgal and his co-authors about the structure and geological history of the Northern Black Sea region in general and of Karadag in particular gradually affirm novel views in the geological science instead of those that are individual, erroneous, and generally accepted.