Vera Baltz

Balts was born in Saint Petersburg in 1866.[1] The daughter of a high-ranking officer in the Imperial Russian Army, Balts was educated at the Tenishevsky School in Saint Petersburg. She became interested in biology and the field of soil science, eventually working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg (then renamed as Leningrad) and the V.V. Dokuchaev Central Museum of Soil. Specializing in soil structure, engineering geology and road construction, she attended several international conferences of soil scientists in the late 1920s. She also published a number of scientific works during this time.[1]

In December 1930, Balts was arrested as part of a group of people considered to be antigovernmental agitators by the Soviet government. She was sentenced to five years of forced labor at Solovki prison camp, where she continued her work as a soil scientist. Balt was released from prison in 1933 on account of her old age, though the Soviet government levied additional restrictions on her and suppressed her work. Balt would then settle in Arkhangelsk with her niece. She was eventually forced to move to Syktyvkar, where she died of decompensated myocarditis brought on by starvation in 1943.[2][3]