December 7, 2008 would have marked the 80th anniversary of Tatyana Ivanovna Alekseeva, an academician, an outstanding scientist, one of the leaders of Russian anthropological science, a wise teacher, a charming and kind person, a brilliant and very beautiful woman. She died on June 22, 2007, a little more than a year before her anniversary, for which she was preparing: she was writing monographs on the results of research over the past three decades. For several years in a row, T. I. Alekseeva, her colleagues and students published one or two monographs annually. She was interested in such problems as human evolution, ethnic paleoanthropology, theory of race studies, race and ethnogenesis of ancient and modern historical and cultural groups in Russia and neighboring countries, anthropoecology, and museum studies.

Tatyana Ivanovna also worked extensively on the archives of her husband, Academician Valery Pavlovich Alekseev. The unexpected death of this man, which occurred in November 1991, shocked everyone who knew him. Valery Pavlovich and Tatyana Ivanovna lived together for 40 years, and all these years they were united by love, mutual respect and a common cause that became the meaning of their lives. After the death of Valery Pavlovich, a large number of materials he collected remained - measurement results of osteological collections and descriptions of modern human populations, historiographical notes, diary entries, plans-prospectuses of books that he was going to work on. Thanks to Tatyana Ivanovna's efforts, Valery Pavlovich's works are still being published today, and extensive materials are being prepared for publication.

A very important place in the life and work of T. I. Alekseeva was occupied by teaching. Tatiana Ivanovna loved working with students, instilling in them an interest in learning about the anthropological diversity of humanity. Those who chose anthropology as their profession and wanted to do research under its guidance found an excellent teacher who respected in his student, first of all, his individuality, scientific interests and recognized the right to make mistakes. The hospitable home of Tatiana Ivanovna and Valery Pavlovich was opened to their graduate and postgraduate students. Here we had the opportunity to work in the unique library of the Alekseyevs ' anthropologists, meet outstanding scientists and interesting people, participate in discussions on various issues of science, art, sports, politics, and always get good advice and help in difficult times. For me, as probably for other students, Tatyana Ivanovna was first of all a wise mentor, a friend who always radiated benevolence, the center of a bright and interesting life filled with creativity and positive emotions.

For Tatiana Ivanovna, science was the environment, the air she breathed. Her whole eventful and exciting life was connected with the world of science. Since 1946, when she became a student, and until the last day, the main activity of Tatyana Ivanovna took place at Moscow State University, at the Department of Anthropology of the Faculty of Biology and at the Research Institute of Anthropology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University.,

Chief Researcher of the Research Institute of Anthropology of Moscow State University, headed the Museum of Anthropology of Moscow State University since the early 1990s. Tatyana Ivanovna also led the Physical anthropology group at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1991, T. I. Alekseeva was elected a corresponding member, and in 2000 - an Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She performed a great deal of scientific and organizational work: she was the chairman of the Museum Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, President of the Russian Branch of the European Anthropological Association, represented the traditions of Russian anthropological science in the system of world research, and contributed to the development of Russian anthropology in contact with the humanities and natural sciences.

Tatyana Ivanovna was endowed with the talent to communicate with people, create an active team, find common ground and fruitfully cooperate with researchers in various fields of science. Under her leadership back in the 1960s. the first multidisciplinary programs for studying biological processes in populations of modern humanity in the Russian anthropological science were created and implemented. From these programs grew a whole scientific direction, almost immediately recognized by domestic and foreign anthropologists, biologists, and physicians - physiological anthropology.

Since the early 1970s, an ecological trend has emerged in human science, which considers the evolution of humanity as a whole, the history of human populations, and even the life of individuals as a series of dynamic processes of adaptation to changing environmental conditions, which determine the polymorphism of the Homo sapiens species. The formation and development of the ecological direction in Russian anthropology is associated with the name of T. I. Alekseeva.

Studying the problems of anthropoecology is a big, bright, but at the same time very difficult stage in Tatyana Ivanovna's life. The development of the concept of human ecology, research methods, and verification of hypotheses were carried out on the basis of materials collected during expeditions. Expedition work for almost 30 years yielded a unique result - more than 100 populations of different regions of Northern Eurasia were studied. The comprehensive program included the study of body structure, biochemical and physiological parameters of metabolism, genetic markers, demographic structure, growth, development and aging processes. The indigenous population of the Russian North, Central Russia, Central and Central Asia, North-East Asia, Southern Siberia, and the subarctic and Arctic zones of Western Siberia were surveyed. The world scientific practice does not know any analogues to this research.

In the course of analyzing the obtained data, T. I. Alekseeva discovered a special morphophysiological complex in humans-the adaptive type - a kind of structural unit of human diversity, which is an external expression of the norm of the biological reaction of individuals in a population to a complex of environmental conditions. A comprehensive development of the adaptive type hypothesis is reflected in a series of articles and three monographs: "Geographical environment and human biology" (1977)," Adaptive processes in human populations "(1986)," Human adaptation in various ecological niches of the Earth " (1998). The adaptive type was considered by Tatyana Ivanovna as the realization of the intraspecific genetically determined potential of variation of the species Homo sapiens, which convergently occurs in similar environmental conditions in populations that may not be genetically related to each other. Based on specific data related to the aboriginal population of various ecological niches, T. I. Alekseeva's works analyze the hierarchy of morphophysiological specificity factors, identify the structure of adaptive types, and reconstruct their chronology.

The concept of adaptive types is of fundamental importance for explaining the phenomenon of ecological diversity of humanity and the formative role of the environment in its life. It is also very important for understanding the phenomenon of human differentiation into discrete groups based on the complexes of morphological features denoted by the term "race".

According to the ecological approach to understanding the biological discreteness of the Homo sapiens species, both an adaptive type and a race are a set of human populations that are characterized by a certain set of inherited biological traits that are formed in a particular territory over the course of several generations. The trigger for this process is adaptation.

T. I. Alekseeva conceptually combined different aspects of the biological variability of humanity. She was a unique expert in the field of race studies and understood the essence of the phenomenon of race like no one else. In almost all the expeditions for the anthropological study of ethno-territorial groups of the population, Tatyana Ivanovna conducted research on the racial program. It describes the polymorphism of the racial complex of the population of the 1950s-1980s on the territory of Eurasia. This is an exceptional situation in the history of science, when the data are absolutely comparable, since they exclude me-

todic discrepancies related to the individual" handwriting " of the researcher.

T. I. Alekseeva began her professional career with research on ethnic anthropology. While still a post-graduate student of the Department of Anthropology at Moscow State University, she led two expeditions (1952-1953) that investigated the indigenous population of the Volga-Oka basin. In 1955-1959. Tatyana Ivanovna led the field work of the famous Russian anthropological expedition, organized by an outstanding anthropologist who laid the foundation of Russian anthropological science, V. V. Bunak. The research covered 17 thousand people-representatives of 107 populations of the Eastern European part of Russia. The purpose of the Russian anthropological expedition was to identify the main morphological elements that were included in the anthropological composition of the Russian people, and to study the ways of its formation. The results of this grandiose project at that time were covered in the monograph " The Origin and Ethnic History of the Russian people "(1965); the author of chapters on the comparative characteristics of ethnic groups in Eastern Europe and a craniological sketch of Slavic groups of the Middle Ages was T. I. Alekseeva.

Tatiana Ivanovna conducted studies of craniological series of Slavs of the X-XIV centuries, compared them with all the Slavic medieval series known by the end of the 1960s. The materials of these works formed the basis of her monograph " Ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs "(1973), which is still the most complete summary of craniological data on the eastern, western and southern Slavs. In the 1960s, Tatiana Ivanovna published a number of articles in which craniological materials were used to solve the problems of the origin of the tribes of medieval Slavs-Krivichi, Vyatichi, Northerners, Novgorod Slovenes-and their role in the formation of the anthropological composition of the Russian ethnic group.

The problems of the genesis of Slavic tribes, the relationship of Slavs with Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes, their consolidation and its role in the formation of the Russian population were for T. I. Alekseeva the subject of scientific research throughout her creative activity. Tatyana Ivanovna and her collaborators constantly introduced new paleoanthropological material on the Slavs into scientific circulation, which was studied using the latest methods. I will mention only the monographs devoted to "Slavic" problems that were published under her leadership and in which she wrote chapters and sections: "Ecological problems in studies of the medieval population of Eastern Europe "(1993), " Eastern Slavs. Anthropology and Ethnic History "(1999).

T. I. Alekseeva fruitfully studied paleoanthropological materials of various ethno-and historical-cultural groups of the Eurasian population and unique Paleolithic finds. These studies are distinguished by the use of an integrated approach, as well as the latest methods of analysis and careful development of issues of adaptation of the ancient population to the environment. It is also possible to characterize the works summarizing the results of a long-term study by a team of anthropologists, archaeologists and geneticists of the burials of the Upper Paleolithic Sungir monument, which are presented in the monograph "Homo sungerensis. Upper Paleolithic Man: Ecological and Evolutionary Aspects of Research "(2000). Tatiana Ivanovna was its executive editor and author of chapters on the craniology of the Sungir people. Collective monograph " Vlahs. Anthropoecological research (based on the materials of the medieval necropolis of Mystikhali)" (2003), which examines the origin of the medieval population of the Balkan Peninsula, is another example of the successful application of an integrated approach to the analysis of the paleoanthropological series.

The materials of the expeditions, whose ideological inspirer and leader for more than 30 years was Tatyana Ivanovna, are of great scientific value. Of course, they were the basis on which the main concepts of ecological and ethnic anthropology were crystallized, and were included in the publications of T. I. Alekseeva and her colleagues. But Tatyana Ivanovna was well aware that these materials required a monographic publication. In 2007, the first such monograph was published; it summarizes the results of many years of expedition research in Central Asia ("Anthropoecological research in Central Asia"). In total, T. I. Alekseeva published more than 250 works. It is difficult to overestimate the contribution of T. I. Alekseeva to world science and culture, to the formation of the intellectual potential of Russian science. Her students are brought up on the example of boundless dedication to their favorite business, the highest level of professionalism and unconditional decency, involvement in the most important problems of society, and careful attitude to people around them. We pay special tribute to Tatyana Ivanovna Alekseeva for her unsurpassed talent as a person, teacher, and scientist.