Geologist, specialist in the Caspian oil fields and one of the discoverers of the Kashagan field, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, winner of the Gazprom Prize (2010) and the N.S. Shatsky Prize (2015). A citizen of Russia and Malta. Honorary foreign member of the Kazakhstan Society of Petroleum Geologists.
Yuri Abramovich Volozh was born on March 30, 1938 in the city of Tiraspol, Moldavian SSR.
He graduated from S.M. Kirov Kazakh State University in 1959 with a degree in Petroleum Geologist Engineer. Then he worked in geophysical organizations of the Ministry of Geology of the USSR in Kazakhstan and Belarus. In 1971, he defended his PhD thesis on the history of the formation of the Caspian Basin. Since 1973, he began working as a chief geologist at the Laboratory of Regional Studies of the Kazakh branch of the All-Union Institute of Exploration Geophysics (VIRG), where he was engaged in the interpretation of deep seismic studies and continued to study sedimentary basins. From 1977 to 1991. He organized and headed the first seismostratigraphy laboratory in the Soviet Union at the K.I. Satpayev Institute of Geological Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.
In 1990, Yu.A. Volozh defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic "Sedimentary basins of Western Kazakhstan (based on seismostratigraphic analysis)".
For the discovery of the Kumkol gas and oil field, Yu.A. Volozh was awarded the "Discoverer of the field" badge (1990).
Area of scientific interests: seismostratigraphy, geodynamics, modeling of sedimentary basins and oil and gas bearing systems.
He is the author of more than 200 publications, 7 monographs, tectonic maps and an atlas of thematic maps. He has two patents related to the method of discovery of hydrocarbon deposits (RF Patent 2536072 "Method for forecasting hydrocarbon deposits" and RF Patent 2180128 "Method for constructing a seismostratigraphic model of the environment"). One of the creators of the unique international Atlas of paleogeographic and palinspastic maps of Central Asia.
According to the recommendations of Yuri Abramovich, the Zapadno-Astrakhanskoye gas fields in the Astrakhan region and Khongr gas fields in Kalmykia were discovered in the south of the Caspian Basin.
From 1991 to the present, Yu.A. Volozh has been working as a chief researcher at the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow). Member of the editorial board of the journal Geotectonics.
Yuri Abramovich Volozh became a laureate of the N.S. Shatsky Prize (together with T.N. Kheraskova, M.P. Antipov) for a series of works devoted to the study of the deep structure of the East European Platform (monographs: "Astrakhan carbonate massif: structure and oil and gas potential" and "Orenburg tectonic node: geological structure and oil and gas potential"). This prize in Russia is awarded for outstanding works in the field of geological sciences.
Winner of the Gazprom Prize (2010) for a set of works and recommendations for the Astrakhan region.
Yuri Abramovich's wife, Sofya Lvovna Volozh, taught at the Alma-Ata Conservatory. They have been together for 60 years. They have two children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandson. Daughter Elena Zemlinskaya is a geophysicist engineer. Son Arkady Volozh is the co–founder and CEO of Yandex.