Alexander von Middendorff
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Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (Russian: Александр Федорович Миддендорф) (August 18, 1815 - January 24, 1894) was a Russian zoologist and explorer of Baltic-German origin.
Middendorff was born in Saint Petersburg, where he received his early education. He then studied for a medical degree at the University of Tartu, graduating in 1837. He undertook further studies at Berlin, Erlangen, Vienna, and Breslau. In 1839 he became Assistant Professor of Zoology at Kiev. Shortly afterwards he took part in Karl Ernst von Baer's expedition to the Kola Peninsula.
From 1843 to 1845 he travelled to the Taimyr Peninsula on behalf of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He published his findings in Reise in den äussersten Norden und Osten Sibiriens (Travels in the extreme north and east of Siberia) (1848-75), which included an account of the effects of permafrost on the spread of animals and plants. He also wrote Die Isepiptesen Russlands (1855), an account of bird migration in Russia, and a monograph on molluscs, Beiträge zu einer Malacozoologia Rossica (1848-9), in which he coined the term radula.
He died at Hellenurme in the Livonia, nowadays in Valga County, Estonia.
Middendorff's Grasshopper Warbler, Cape Middendorff (Novaya Zemlya), Kodiak Bear, and Middendorff Bay (Taymyr Peninsula) are named after him.
[edit] References
- E. Tammiksaar, I. Stone, "Alexander von Middendorff and his expedition to Siberia (1842-1845)", Polar Record 43 (226): 193-216 (2007)
- Barbara and Richard Mearns, Audubon to Xantus, The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names, ISBN 0124874231
