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Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811). Zoographia rosso-asiatica Petropoli: In officina Caes. Academiae Scientarum Impress., 1831. 3 vols. Ellis Aves D424
By Nature Wise... Peter Simon Pallas was German born and studied in Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain before he came to St. Petersburg at age 26, and a year later was leading (with Falk and Delisle) an expedition as a member of the Academy…
Chappe d’Auteroche, abbé (1728-1769). Voyage en Sibérie. Paris: Debure, pere, 1768. 3 vols. Ellis Aves E36
"Leave Northern Siberia to the Bears," he said... Among the westerners who achieved scientific immortality for their courageous forays into the frozen parts of Russia, was a Frenchman with equal passion for both religion and science: priest and…
Johann Friedrich von Brandt (1802-1879). Mittheilungen über die Naturgeschichte des Mammuth oder Mamont (Elephas primigenius). St. Petersburg: Kaiserlich Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1866. Ellis Omnia C330
The Elephantine Russian Empire... Johann Friedrich Brandt, known as well by his Russian moniker Fedor Fedorovich Brandt, was a native of Saxony, educated in Berlin as zoologist, surgeon, botanist and pharmacologist. He moved to St. P. just short of…
L’encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Mis en ordre & publié par M. Diderot. A Paris: chez Briasson, David, Le Breton, 1751-1780. 35 vols. G135, pls. v.6
The Trotskys and Other Awful Diseases; or, Bring Out Your Dead... One advantage of living in a frosty clime is that when the temperatures dip, the vectors for plague disappear: rats die and fleas become inactive. For this reason, in part, Petersburg…
Johann Peter Falk (1727-1774) Beyträge zur topographischen Kenntniss des Russischen Reichs. St. Petersburg: gedruckt bey der Kayserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1785-1786. 3 vols. Linnæana C525
Hunting the White Siberian Taiga... The "Academic Expeditions," so-called, had been organized between 1768 and 1774 by the tsardom and would demonstrate the high standards of the Academy of Sciences. The Empress Catherine II, however, wanted prestige…
Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1758). Flora sibirica sive Historia plantarum sibiriae. Petropoli: ex Tip. Academiae Scientiarum, 1747-1769. 4 vols. Linnæana D63, v.1
Into the Hinterlands of the Mother of all Hinterlands... Johann Georg Gmelin, born into a famous family of German scientists, came to St. Petersburg at the age of 18 (in 1727) and 6 years later took off with German historian Gerhard Friedrich…
William Woodville (1752-1805). Medical botany. 2d ed. London: printed and sold by William Phillips, 1810. Linnæana D92, v.4
Hey Baba Reba, Rhubarb Pie! Scottish doctors, surgeons, and naturalists played a pre-eminent part in Anglo/Russian natural history in the 18th and early 19th centuries, for example, John Fraser (1750-1811) as royal botanical collector to the Tsar;…
Romer Wilson (1891-1930). The social climbers: a Russian middle-class tragedy in four acts seen through London: Ernest Benn, 1927. B6125
Feodor: Verochka, do you remember those evenings we spent in the cornfields? British writer Romer Wilson's novels and novellas and in this case, a play, deal with the issues of art, love, and contemporary issues – contemporary with the first…
André Schaeffner (born 1895). Strawinsky. Paris: Les Éditions Rieder, 1938. C9651
The Last of the Warmenoughs... It is said that 1913 had the cold feel of revolution in St. P. The weather told the story as it had before in Russian literature (the setting for the events in Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman" was the calamitous…
Shoeless Yosuf...
Shoeless Yosuf... One of this westerner's childhood memories is children's books from Europe. They were in French, German, Russian, and thus "unreadable" but beloved just the same, and linguistic barriers contributed to their mystique. This…