LEVIN, MAKSIM GRIGORYEVICH

LEVIN, MAKSIM GRIGORYEVICH (1904–1963), Soviet Russian ethnologist and physical anthropologist. Levin did extensive field work in Siberia and wrote on the ethnology of Asiatic Russia and Siberia. The expert knowledge accumulated in these expeditions is reflected in his Narody Sibiri ("Peoples of Siberia," 1956), which he edited with L.P. Potapov and to which he was himself an important contributor; and in Istoriko-geograficheskiy atlas Sibiri ("A Historico-Geographical Atlas of Siberia," 1961), which he again edited with L.P. Potapov. He also wrote Ocherki po istorii antropologii v Rossii (1960), a history of the development of anthropology. One of his works, Etnicheskaya antropolgiya i problemy etnogeneza narodov Dal nego Vostoka (1958), became available in English translation in 1963 as Ethnic Origins of the Peoples of North-eastern Asia. Levin became deputy director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. and head of its physical anthropology section, and edited many of the institute's publications. (Ephraim Fischoff)