Akademiya Nauk Range is a mountain range

Mountain range

A mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...

 in the Western Pamirs

Pamir Mountains

The Pamir Mountains are a mountain range in Central Asia formed by the junction or knot of the Himalayas, Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, and Hindu Kush ranges. They are among the world’s highest mountains and since Victorian times they have been known as the "Roof of the World" a probable...

 of Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

. It is stretched in the meridian

Meridian (geography)

A meridian is an imaginary line on the Earth's surface from the North Pole to the South Pole that connects all locations along it with a given longitude. The position of a point along the meridian is given by its latitude. Each meridian is perpendicular to all circles of latitude...

al direction and considered to be the core of the Pamir mountain system.

The highest peak

Pyramidal peak

A pyramidal peak, or sometimes in its most extreme form called a glacial horn, is a mountaintop that has been modified by the action of ice during glaciation and frost weathering...

 of the range is the Ismoil Somoni Peak. It was also the highest peak in the former Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. The length of the Akademiya Nauk Range is about 110 km. The crest of the range has an Alpine

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

-like relief

Terrain

Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...

 with 24 summits more than 6,000 m in height. The lowest saddle point

Mountain pass

A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. If following the lowest possible route, a pass is locally the highest point on that route...

, Kamaloyak (Камалояк), is at the altitude of 4,340 m (14,240 ft).

The range is formed with sedimentary

Sedimentary rock

Sedimentary rock are types of rock that are formed by the deposition of material at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles to settle and accumulate or minerals to precipitate from a solution....

 and metamorphic rock

Metamorphic rock

Metamorphic rock is the transformation of an existing rock type, the protolith, in a process called metamorphism, which means "change in form". The protolith is subjected to heat and pressure causing profound physical and/or chemical change...

s of the Paleozoic Era and partially granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

s. It is covered with permanent snow, which feeds a large number of big glacier

Glacier

A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

s. The total area of the glacial ice is around 1,500 km².

The Akademiya Nauk Range was discovered by Russian geographer and Pamir explorer Nikolai Korzhenevskiy

Nikolai Korzhenevskiy

Nikolai Leopol'dovich Korzhenevskiy , 1879 – October 31, 1958), born in Vitebsk Guberniya, Russia , died in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A famous Russian and Soviet geographer, glaciologist, Pamir explorer. His exploration of Pamir began in 1903, with support from the military command in the region...

 and named after the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1927.