Boris Palladiyerrich Karakulin, an outstanding mycologist an expert on parasitic conidial fungi of the USSR, was born in Pskov, Russia in 1888. He studied in the Natural Sciences Department of the Physics & Mathematics Faculty of St Petersburg University, from which he graduated from in 1912. In January 1919, he was assigned to the Central Plant Pathology Station of Petrograd [St Petersburg] Botanic Garden [now the V.L. Komarov Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences]. From then on he worked in that Institution, at first in the Department of Plant Pathology and later in the Department of Cryptogamic Plants. In 1941, during the Great Patriotic War [Second World War] and the horrors of the Leningrad [St Petersburg] blockade, he defended his doctoral thesis. He died in 1942. His publications had a long and useful life as handbooks for mycologists and plant pathologists of countries of the former Soviet Union. Summarized from an article about B.P. Karakulin by V.P. Savich, honoured scientific worker and head of the Department of Cryptogamic Plants of the V.L. Komarov Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, April 1950, Leningrad. Lists. Publications. Taxa. Kirk & Ansell form of name: Karak.