Igor Popov was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Russia, in 1971. He studied biology at Leningrad State University between 1988 and 1993. Afterwards, he worked at the Institute for the History of Science at the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg Branch), Institute for Fisheries, Directorate of Protected Areas of St Petersburg, Konrad Lorenz Institute (Austria), University of Paris 7 Denis Diderot (France) (post-doctoral fellowship supported by Fondation La maison des sciences de l’homme), and N. N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology. He is currently a researcher in the Department for Applied Ecology (Faculty of Biology, St Petersburg State University). Popov’s main research objects were salmonid fishes, bats, marine mammals, freshwater bivalves, and crayfish. His fields of interest include ecology, evolution, history of science, paleontology, zoology, and gerontology as well as various aspects of conservation biology. ORCID: 0000-0002-2564-3294; Scopus ID: 55427914900; Researcher ID: I-4096-2013.