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In Memoriam Sergei R. Loskutov
With deep sorrow, we announce that on February 20, 2026, outstanding scientist, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Professor, and Fellow of the IAWS, Sergei Redzhinaldovich Loskutov, passed away. He made an enormous contribution to wood science in Russia and abroad.
Sergei R. Loskutov was born on June 14, 1951, in Krasnoyarsk. After graduating from the Faculty of Physics at Krasnoyarsk State University in 1973 with a degree in biophysics, he devoted his career to the study of wood. His scientific life was tied to the V. N. Sukachev Institute of Forest, SB RAS, where he rose from young researcher to Head of the Laboratory of Physicochemical Biology of Woody Plants and Deputy Director for Research, while also teaching at Siberian State Technological University (later Reshetnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology).
He defended his Candidate of Sciences dissertation in 1984 on water in larch wood at positive and negative temperatures, and in 1999 earned his Doctor of Chemical Sciences degree for his fundamental work on wood's interaction with physically active low molecular weight substances. He authored or co-authored more than 150 publications, including four monographs, and founded a scientific school whose ideas his students and colleagues continue to develop.
In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of IAWS. He served on the editorial board of the Siberian Journal of Forest Science, reviewed for journals including BioResources and Forests, and received the Certificate of Honour from the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1999) and the Honorary Badge "Silver Sigma" from SB RAS (2007). An active member of IAWS's Regional Coordination Council of Wood Science, he organized the 6th International Symposium in Memory of B. N. Ugolev in Krasnoyarsk (2018) and served on committees at conferences worldwide.
Colleagues remember him as a wise mentor and brilliant, deeply empathetic scientist of inexhaustible optimism — a music lover who wrote poetry, played guitar, and roller skated, staying young at heart. His depth of thought, simplicity, humor, and inner nobility will be remembered by all who knew him, and his memory will live on in his students, colleagues, and scientific school.
