<p class="ZootaxaTitle"><strong>Obituary: Alexander Vladimirovich Rzhavsky (1959–2018)</strong></p>

Alexander (or Sasha as he was known and preferred to be addressed by his friends) Rzhavsky was born in Moscow, then USSR on 25 August 1959, which means he would have turned 60 soon after the 13th International Polychaete Conference held in Long Beach in August 2019. He was one of those “natural born biologists” whose keen interest in biology became obvious when he was still a child and this interest developed into both profession and life-time passion. In 1976 Alexander graduated from one of the high schools in Moscow that had a specialization in biology and a year later he started his undergraduate studies at Biological Faculty of Moscow Lomonosov State University. He started doing research at the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy of Invertebrates as an undergraduate and that was the time when his scientific interests were determined, as both his Honors and Master’s projects were dedicated to polychaetes, the animals Sasha continued to study for the rest of his life. His diploma thesis was entitled “Ecology of Janua (Dexiospira) nipponica and J. (D.) alveolata (Polychaeta, Spirorbidae) near the southern shore of the Primorye and the morphology of their tubes”. Based on the results of these student projects Alexander published his first two research papers.