Igor Ya. Pavlinov was, until his retirement in 2018, the leading researcher and the chief of the Mammal Division at the Zoological Museum, Lomonosov Moscow State University. He is still affiliated with the Zoological Museum, where he is a curator of mammals. His doctoral dissertation was Cladistic approach to phylogenetics and systematics: Theoretical foundations of evolutionary cladistics (1997). His principal research interests are in theoretical systematics and phylogenetics, systematics of mammals (mainly rodents), and morphometrics. He is the author of several dozen books on natural history, including Cladistic Analysis: Methodological Issues (1990), Evolution of Life (2001), Systematics of Mammals of the World (2003), Foundations of the Contemporary Phylogenetics (2005), Nomenclature in Systematics (2015) and its successor Taxonomic Nomenclature-What's in a Name: Theory and History (2022), Foundations of Biological Systematics (2018) and its successor Biological Systematics: History and Theory (2021), Mammals of Russia: A Guide (2019), The Species Problem. A Conceptual History (2023), and several books on particular orders and families of mammals.