Gagarinskaya Ulitsa, 23 Sankt-Peterburg Russia 191028
Middendorff graduated from the Third Petersburg Gymnasium, of which his father was a director.
College/University
Gallery of Alexander von Middendorff
Ülikooli 18, 50090 Tartu, Estonia
From 1832 Middendorff pursued a medical degree at the Imperial University of Dorpat where his professors included Georg Friedrich Parrot, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov, Hermann Martin Asmuss, and Alexander Friedrich von Hueck. In 1837 he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree with a dissertation (written in Latin) on polyps in the bronchi.
Career
Achievements
Membership
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Alexander von Middendorff was a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Russian Geographical Society
Alexander von Middendorff was a member of the Russian Geographical Society.
Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry
Alexander von Middendorff was a member of the Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry.
From 1832 Middendorff pursued a medical degree at the Imperial University of Dorpat where his professors included Georg Friedrich Parrot, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov, Hermann Martin Asmuss, and Alexander Friedrich von Hueck. In 1837 he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree with a dissertation (written in Latin) on polyps in the bronchi.
Alexander von Middendorff was a member of the Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry.
Connections
Wife: Hedwig Elisabeth von Hippius
Son: Ernst von Middendorff
Son: Max von Middendorff
colleague: Karl Baer
The Estonian anatomist and embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) was the first to describe the mammalian ovum. He also developed the germ-layer theory, which became the basis for modern embryology.
Alexander von Middendorff was a Rissian explorer, geographer, naturalist, and zoologist. He is considered one of the founders of the geocriology.
Background
Ethnicity:
Von Middendorff's father was Baltic German and mother was Estonian.
Alexander von Middendorff was born on August 18, 1815, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire (now Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation) to the family of Theodor Johann von Middendorff, director of the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, whose father was a Baltic German pastor in Karuse, Estonia and Sophia Johanson, the daughter of an Estonian farmer, had been sent to Saint Petersburg for education by her parents. His parents were of different social status and could not marry so von Middendorff and his sister were born out of wedlock and baptized only after six months in the Estonian Lutheran Congregation of St. Petersburg, as the German Lutheran Congregation of St. Petersburg had refused to perform the baptism. In order to escape public attention, Middendorff and his mother returned to Estonia, where they settled at the Pööravere Mansion. When he went to school his parents finally married and his status was legitimized.
Education
Middendorff received his early education from tutors in Reval. He graduated from the Third Petersburg Gymnasium, of which his father was a director. From 1832 he pursued a medical degree at the Imperial University of Dorpat where his professors included Georg Friedrich Parrot, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov, Hermann Martin Asmuss, and Alexander Friedrich von Hueck. In 1837 he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree with a dissertation (written in Latin) on polyps in the bronchi. For two years he studied zoology, botany, and geognosy at universities in Germany and Austria.
In 1839 and 1840 Middendorff taught zoology at Kyiv University. During the summer of 1839, he traveled to the Kola Peninsula with Karl Ernst von Baer.
In 1844 Middendorff completed a two-year journey to northern and eastern Siberia commissioned by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1845 he was elected to membership in the Academy, and in 1852 he became its permanent secretary. A sharp decline in his health obliged Middendorff in 1865 to relinquish his post as an academician, but he was retained as an honorary academician. Middendorff subsequently resided at his estate, Hellenurme, where he completed a multivolume account of his Siberian journey and also journeyed to the Baraba Steppe in Western Siberia, and to the Fergana Valley in Central Asia.
Middendorff gave a brilliant geographical description and an ecological and geographical analysis of the fauna of Siberia, in which he examined in detail the concept of species, the causes of changes of species, the adaptation of animals to their environment, and laws of the geographical distribution of animals, including the distribution of boreal species in a zone surrounding the pole. No less valuable is his description of the geographical distribution and ecological peculiarities of Siberia’s vegetation.
Two tasks had been assigned to the expedition to Siberia: to study the quality and quantity of organic life and to verify the presence and distribution of the permafrost discovered in many Siberian locations, especially in Yakutsk. Middendorff twice crossed the Taymyr Peninsula and in Yakutsk revealed the mysterious phenomenon of permafrost and laid the scientific bases of the study of frozen soil. He calculated the geothermal gradient in the Fedor Shergin well and, on the basis of this calculation, determined the depth of the frozen layer under Yakutsk to be 204 meters (10 meters less than the current value). In the third stage of the expedition, Middendorff crossed the Dzhugdzhur Range and investigated the flora and fauna of the Okhotsk Sea coastal areas and of the Shantar Islands.
Achievements
Middendorf's scientific and service activities were highly praised. On August 26, 1856, he received the rank of Active State Councillor, and on December 3, 1873, the rank of Privy Councillor. He was granted a number of orders of the Russian Empire: the Order of Saint Vladimir, the Order of Saint Anna, and the Order of Saint Stanislaus. In 1861 and 1872, the highest favor was declared to him; in 1868, Alexander II granted him a diamond ring with his monogram.
Middendorff's grasshopper warbler, Cape Middendorff of Novaya Zemlya, Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi), and Middendorff Bay of the Taymyr Peninsula are named after him.
Middendorf believed that mammoths lived in central and southern Siberia in an era when the climate there was close to modern.
Membership
Alexander von Middendorff was a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the Russian Geographical Society, and the Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry.
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
,
Russia
Russian Geographical Society
,
Russia
Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry
,
Russia
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Middendorff's Siberian journey led to the establishment of the Russian Geographical Society.
Connections
Alexander von Middendorff married Hedwig Elisabeth von Hippius. They had six children: Ernst, Karl, Hedwig, Max (who died a day after birth), Christine, and Max.
