Budag Abdulali oglu Budagov was born on February 23, 1928 in Chobankara village of Ulukhanli district near Iravan. In 1940, he finished a seven-year school in Mehmandar village of the same district, and during the war years, he worked as an assistant foreman of the collective farm in Chobankara village. He graduated from Iravan Pedagogical School in 1947, and from the Faculty of Geography of the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University in 1951.
B. Budagov worked as a collector in the geological expedition studying the intrusive rocks of the Lesser Caucasus (in 1948–1949) while he was a student. B. Budagov first became interested in scientific research while the expedition was conducting field research in the regions of Aghdara, Kalbajar, Lachin, Garakilsa (Sisian) of the Lesser Caucasus. This young man, who graduated from the institute with Stalin scholarship, studied at the post-graduate course of the Institute of Geography of the former USSR, and in May 1955 in Moscow he defended his dissertation on “Geomorphology of the North Slope of the South-Eastern Caucasus” and was awarded the degree of Candidate of Geography Sciences. In the same year, he returned to Baku and worked junior researcher, senior researcher at the Geography Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR, Scientific Secretary of the Geographical Society, and the head of the Physical Geography Department of the Institute of Geography.
His reports on “The influence of new tectonic movements on the formation of floods” in Tbilisi (1961), “Prediction of the formation of floods by geomorphological methods” (1962) in Baku, and “Modern and ancient glaciation of the Eastern Caucasus” (1963) in Tbilisi at the Transcaucasian and All-Union conferences were well-received by scientists.
In 1967, an important event happened in the life of Budagov. Thus, in the same year, he defended his doctoral thesis on “Geomorphology and new tectonics of the Azerbaijani part of the Greater Caucasus” and received the degree of Doctor of Geography. In 1969, he was awarded the title of professor.
Budag Budagov’s “The Life of Mountains” (1965), “Legendary Mountains” (1973), “Let’s Protect Nature” (1983), “Geography and Agricultural Monuments” (1980), “Tolerable-Intolerable Nature” (1991), “Nature and poetry” (1992), “Elim, obam menim” (1984), “Geographic memory of Turkish nations” (1994), the textbook “General geomorphology” for higher schools (1967, 1986), which he co-authored, and “Geography of Azerbaijan” (1983, 1991, 1993) for secondary schools, which he co-authored again are an integral part of his scientific activity.
Along with his scientific work, Budag Budagov almost always held official positions. For many years, he was the head of the landscape studies department of the Geographical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR (1967–1986), the deputy president of the Geographical Society of the Azerbaijan SSR (1970–1990), the deputy director for scientific affairs of the Geographical Institute of the Azerbaijan SSR (1974–1983). He was also a member of the plenum of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Budag Budagov was elected a correspondent member of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR in 1976, and a full member in 1989. In addition, he worked as a teacher at the Department of Physics and Geography of Azerbaijan State University (now BSU) (1965–1968), and at the Faculty of Geography at Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute (1969).
Budag Abdulali oglu Budagov died in 2012.
Source:
Əsgər Zeynalov, İrəvan ziyalıları (Bakı: Oğuz eli, 1999)
