Mark, an internationally known glaciologist and contributor to Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, died unexpectedly on 5 September 2009. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a devoted husband and father.
He was born in Moscow, Russia; both of his parents were engineers, and his mother was also a poet. Mark was educated at Moscow State University, where he received his BS and PhD degrees in 1970 and 1974. His mentor was the famous glaciologist Petr Shumsky. In 1990 Mark received the higher degree of Doctor of Science from the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Science, and in 1992 was awarded the title Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources by the Russian Academy.
Mountains and glaciology were two of the biggest passions in Mark's life. He did research in Antarctica, where he wintered over twice. He also conducted glaciological studies in the Caucasus and on many of the high mountains of Central Asia and climbed Peak Communism (7495 m) in 1977, the highest mountain in the former Soviet Union. Mark conducted glaciological research for more than 21 days on the Pamir Glacier Plateau at elevations of 5900–6500 m without descending. At that time it was a record for a scientist working for so long at such a high elevation.
Mark came to the United States in 1995 to work with American glaciologists in Boulder, and became an American citizen in 2003. He continued his work as a Research Scientist and Fellow of INSTAAR, and collaborated with personnel at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, as well as with other local scientists and graduate students and colleagues around the world. Mark's closest colleagues were Mark Meier and Tad W. Pfeffer at INSTAAR, and David Bahr (now at Regis University). They helped Mark quickly integrate in the American glaciological community. In 2004, he received a fellowship from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and in 2006–2007 he was in Stockholm as recipient of a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship. At the time of his death, he had published over 120 scientific papers, including two in 2009, in the fields of glacier monitoring, methods of mass balance and runoff study, and all aspects of glacier regime in relation to climate change and melt-water production. Until the last hours, he was working on a major book that will be published in English as an issue of Materials of Glaciological Research (Materialy Glyatsiologicheskikh Issledovaniy). The best known of Mark's contributions to the scientific literature are his several syntheses of glacier mass balance, ice-melt contributions to sea-level rise, and regional water balances (e.g., the Arctic), which have been published in AAAR and other peer-reviewed journals, as well as global compendiums including two published in the INSTAAR Occasional Paper series. His results figured in the climate-change and sea-level sections of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Mark is survived by his beloved wife Tatyana Kostyashkina and daughter Anya, as well as his former wife, two children, and four grandchildren who live in Russia. He will be sorely missed for his cheery disposition, his willingness to assist colleagues, his help in promoting international exchanges and the advancement of glaciological research, as well as for his personal contributions to science.{ label needed for fig[@id='i1523-0430-42-1-129-f01'] }
