 He was a research associate at the Natural History Museum in London from 1930 to 1931.In 1932 he moved to Moscow and began working in petrogeology at the State Petroleum Research Institute until 1934.From 1934 to 1937 he worked as a Senior Research Officer at the Institute of Mineral Fuels of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and was also a part-time lecturer at the University of Moscow's Moscow Petroleum Institute and Palaeontological Institute in 1936.