This year Kazakhstan celebrates a great date - 125 years since the birth of Kanysh Imantaevich Satpayev - a great son of the Kazakh steppe, whose name is associated with huge achievements in science and industry. K.I. Satpayev is the first compiler of school algebra textbook in Kazakh language, the first professional engineer-geologist among Kazakhs, the first Kazakh-academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the first president and founder of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan, the first director of the Institute of Geology of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, the first laureate of the State and Lenin prizes in Kazakhstan.
An outstanding scientist-geologist, an outstanding organizer of science, a major state and public figure, Satpayev inscribed his name in the history of his people with golden letters. The greatness of Academician K. Satpayev is difficult to overestimate! A man of high erudition, who had encyclopedic knowledge in many fields of science, Satpayev set an intellectual and scientific trend of development in the country, as a result of which the Kazakh society turned from enlightened to intellectual-scientific and professional. It is thanks to the merits of the great scientist that the foundation of today's innovative and scientific potential, which our people, our youth and our country possess, was laid.
At that time, in the mid-1930s, Kazakhstan's society was literate and enlightened, but any professional engineering staff was trained in Russia or Uzbekistan, and science was the domain of only visiting Moscow and Leningrad scientists.
Young engineer-geologist Kanysh Satpayev started his professional activity in 1927 at Karsakpai copper mine in the absence of local professional staff, lack of funding and on the equipment inherited from British concessionaires. In 3 years, by the beginning of 1930, he scientifically confirmed the fact that several scattered copper deposits discovered by his group were one big Dzhezkazgan copper deposit, the largest in the world, with reserves of at least 2 million tons. Later his first fundamental scientific article “To the problem of big Dzhezkazgan” (“People's Economy of Kazakhstan”, 1936. - № 1-2. - P. 74-83) was published.
The discovery of Big Dzhezkazgan, which forever changed the image of Central Kazakhstan and our country as a whole, in addition to the human feat, is a vivid example of a professional scientific approach to the realization of a practical task. And then in Karsakpai settlement, thousands of kilometers away from civilization, and in all his subsequent life K. Satpayev followed the firm line of accurate and scrupulous analysis of scientific facts, artifacts with the help of the best available means of research and analysis.
One cannot but admire the scientist's amazing scientific flair. On the basis of separate scientific facts the scientist managed to make an analytical generalization: “Big Dzhezkazgan is not the only object. Within the Dzhezkazgan district there are quite large reserves of iron, iron-manganese ores, allowing to plan the mining of these ores on a large scale”. This discovery would play a key role in preserving the Union's steel industry during World War II.
With the beginning of financing the development of Dzhezkazgan - the construction of a copper smelting plant, a water reservoir and the laying of a railroad - there were prerequisites for the establishment of the country's first higher technical educational institution in 1934 - the Kazakh Mining and Metallurgical Institute (KazGMI), better known in the country as Polytechnic (now the Kazakh National Research Technical University named after K.I. Satpayev). The established institute became a forge of its own professional staff, including for the growing mining and metallurgical and geological industry of the country.
This vector of professional training of top-level engineering personnel, laid in KazGMI, provided the needs of the republic in professionals and became the backbone of the formation of the first Kazakh scientific personnel. Consistency of K. Satpayev in the formation of engineering-intellectual and scientific elite of the mining and metallurgical sector of the country is a vivid evidence of his organizational qualities and scientific foresight. Steps in this direction allowed to create in 1940 the first Kazakh scientific center on the basis of the Institute of Geological Sciences. Later, with the involvement of related fields of science on the basis of the academic branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was established in 1946 Kazakh National Academy of Sciences.
Systematic and in-depth studies on the vast territory of Central and Eastern Kazakhstan, conducted by scientific groups of Kazakhstani geologists under the leadership of K. Satpayev, using the most modern technical means, led him in the early 1950s to the analytical systematization of available data to create geological maps of Kazakhstan.
Scientific foresight, extrapolation and forecasting of data using the first systematized metallogenic maps of Kazakhstan still allow us to successfully discover new rich deposits of metal ores on the territory of our country. Systematization of scattered factual regional data into a single complex-geological map of Central Kazakhstan allowed K. Satpayev to develop fundamental and universal scientific provisions on the regularities of spatial location of deposits.
It is obvious that the main merit of Satpayev as a scientist lies in his enormous contribution to the development of geological research in Kazakhstan. It is well known that under his direct supervision the development of the largest copper, iron and manganese deposits began. But the most important is his role in the qualitative transformation of Kazakhstan from an agrarian to an industrial-scientific-intellectual country. Academician Kanysh Satpayev's contribution to the introduction of scientific culture and methodological approaches in the field of science, which are an example for systematized research work of the current generations of scientists of Kazakhstan and young people interested in science, is also invaluable.
Source: National Economy of Kazakhstan, 1936
Soviet Geology, 1957
Izvestiya AS KazSSR, 1955
Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, 1962