Background
Leo was born in Yerevan on 19 March 1931, the son of Suren, a family physician, and Julia.
Leo was born in Yerevan on 19 March 1931, the son of Suren, a family physician, and Julia.
In 1950 he graduated from Leo High School in Yessentuki and then moved to Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he met General Рractitioner Dementieev and other ornithologists.
After his graduation in 1955 he spent two years at the Zoological Museum of the university (Zoological Museum of the Moscow State Lomonosov University – ZMMU), where he met ornithologists from all over the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics who came to examine the collection. From 1957 he taught zoology and under the guidance of South. P. Naumov and A. V. Mikheev, he and some students made expeditions to the Tien Shan, the Pamirs, the Urals and other regions to collect bird specimens. He published several papers on the results of these collection trips.
In 1975 he was invited by the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology of Animals and became part of the scientific team that went on the research vessel "Callisto" to the islands of the southwest Pacific.
He also made expeditions to Mongolia, Vietnam (eleven expeditions from 1978-1990) and North of Korea. His major works included the Birds of Vietnam and the Conspectus of the ornithological fauna of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (1990).
He died on 16 February 2002.