Y. S. Tsaturov, the actual State Adviser of the Russian Federation of the 2nd class, member of the Roshydromet board, deputy head of Main Aviation Meteorological Center, chairman of Roshydromet Public Council, was born in Tbilisi on March 24, 1939. In 1964, he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Tbilisi State University majoring in “Nuclear Physics”. His graduation work “Sr85 Gamma Radiation” was published in Nuclear Physics journal in the same year. From 1965 to 1973, he worked in the Service of Special Control of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, where he was occupied with the studying of the radioactive contamination as a result of nuclear explosions. In 1971 he defended the PhD dissertation dealing with the gamma spectrometry of radioactive products of nuclear explosions.

From 1973 to 1983 Yu. S. Tsaturov worked in the central office of the Head Administration of Hydrometeorological Service of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, as the chief engineer in Goskomgidromet of the USSR, as the deputy head of the Administration for the Study and Control of Pollution of External Environment, and afterwards headed the newly-formed Administration for the Standardization and Control of Emissions to the Environment.

Yu. S. Tsaturov actively participated in the elimination of the consequences of the Chernobyl NPP accident. In 1986, he headed the operational Interdepartmental Group of the Assessment of Radiation Conditions in Chernobyl (July and September 1986) and was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples in late 1986. Being the CIS coordinator of works after the Chernobyl NPP accident he took the active part in the preparation and publication of “The Atlas of Pollution of Europe with Cs-137” jointly with foreign researchers.

He is the chairman of the Working Group on Environmental Monitoring and Assessment of the Committee on Environmental Policy of Economic Commission for Europe, the member of the Joint Scientific Committee of Commission for Atmospheric Sciences of World Meteorological Organization on Environmental Pollution and Atmospheric Chemistry, the member of the Higher Ecological Council of Committee on Natural Resources, Nature Management, and Ecology of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

For a long time he was the vice-chairman of the Working Group of Arctic monitoring and assessment, took part in the preparation and publication of the reports on environmental conditions in the Arctic (1998, 2002, 2206, and 2009), on the warming impact in the Arctic (2004), and on its radioactive contamination.

He is the author of more than 80 scientific papers and six inventions used for the creation and use of technical tools for the monitoring of environmental pollution. He is also the member of editorial boards of Arctic Bulletin and The Arctic: Ecology and Economy journals.