20 Tenge Kanysh Satbayev

Kanysh Satbayev, honored here, was the Soviet-era geologist who identified the Zhezkazgan copper deposit in central Kazakhstan as one of the largest in the world — a discovery that shaped the region's industrial development through the twentieth century. He was also founding president of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences, established in 1946. This coin was part of Kazakhstan's first commemorative series issued following independence, honoring figures the Soviet system had alternately celebrated and suppressed.