[5] His best-known result is his 1891 derivation of the 230 symmetry space groups which now serve as the mathematical basis of structural analysis.

In 1895, he became a professor of geology at the Moscow Agricultural Institute (now the Timiryazev Academy).

Fedorov died from pneumonia in 1919 during the Russian Civil War in Petrograd, RSFSR.

He developed the Fedorov stage for polarizing microscopes, a tool for crystallography which allows a mineral specimen to be studied under precise angles of tilt and rotation, providing an analysis of crystal structure.

[8] There is a street named after him on the site of the international X-ray laser research facility European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg.