Alexander Fedorovich Middendorf (1815–1894)

Alexander Fedorovich Middendorf was a Russian zoologist, researcher and biogeographer. By origin he was of the Baltic Germans. He was born in St. Petersburg, where received his early education. In 1837 he received a medical degree in Tartu University, and undertook further studies in Berlin, Erlangen, Vienna and Breslau. In 1839 he became an assistant professor of zoology at the University of Kiev. In 1839 he traveled to the Kola Peninsula and from 1843 to 1845 to the Taimyr Peninsula. Soon Alexander Fedorovich was commissioned by the St.Petersburg Academy of Sciences to research the north and east of Siberia. In 1848-75 he traveled there. During this expedition he had to research the effects of permafrost on the spread of animals and plants. He also wrote a book about the bird migration in Russia, and a monograph on molluscs. His Siberian journey led to the establishment of the Russian Geographical Society.

He died in Estonia.

16 animals, 4 geographical places, и 12 plants were named by this scientist, the most popular of them are: Middendorff's Grasshopper Warbler, Cape Middendorff (Novaya Zemlya), Kodiak Bear, and Middendorff Bay (Taymyr Peninsula).

Karl Ivanovich Maximowicz (1827 - 1891)

Karl Ivanovich Maximowicz was a Russian botanist. He was born in Tula. By origin he was of the Baltic Germans. In 1850 he graduated from the institution which is now University of Tartu, Estonia.

From 1852 he worked as curator of the herbarium at the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden, and in 1869 he became its director. From 1853-1857 he traveled around the world. Maximowicz spent most of his life studying the flora of the countries he had visited in Asia, and discovered many new species.

He travelled with another scientist Leopold von Schrenck to the Amur region in eastern Asia. From 1859 to 1864 he also visited China, Korea and Japan. He arrived in Japan in late 1860, initially basing his operations in Hakodate.

He explored the south of Japan, including the region of Yokohama and Mount Fuji, and ended the trip in Nagasaki. He also studied the flora of Tibet, concluding that is was chiefly composed of immigrants from Mongolia and the Himalaya.

Maximowicz described and named over 2300 new plants which were previously unknown to science. Many of them bear his surname.

Plants named after Maximowicz

Genus Circaeaster Maxim	Berberis thunbergii Maxim		Juglans mandshurica Maxim. Manchurian Walnut

Vladimir Klavdievich Arsenyev (1972 - 1930)

Vladimir Klavdiyevich Arsenyev was a Russian explorer of the Far East who recounted his travels in a series of books telling of his military journeys to the Ussuri basin with Dersu Uzala, a native hunter, from 1902 to 1907. He was the first to describe numerous species of Siberian flora.

Arsenyev was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a former serf who had risen to become the chief of the Moscow District Railway.

After receiving military education, he was sent to the Far East as a surveyor. He lived Vladivostok during the years of the Russian Civil War and was a Commissar on Ethnic Minorities of the independent Far Eastern Republic.

After the Far Eastern Republic was abolished in 1922, Arsenyev stayed in Vladivostok.

Arsenyev is the most famous for authoring many books about his explorations, including some 60 works on the geography, wildlife and ethnography of the regions he traveled. Arsenyev's most famous book, Dersu Uzala, is the author's memoirs of three expeditions in the Ussurian taiga, in Northern Asia along the Sea of Japan and North to Vladivostok. The book is named after Arsenyev's guide, an Ussurian native of the Nanai/Goldi tribe. This book was filmed twice: in 1961, by the Soviet director Agasi Babayan, and in 1975 by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. The latter Dersu Uzala version won that year's Oscar for the Best Foreign-Language Film.

The third book of Arsenyev's trilogy, In the Sikhote-Alin Mountains was published only in 1937.

Arsenyev died at the age of 57 in 1930. His widow, Margarita Nikolaevna Arsenyeva was arrested in 1937. She was charged in that alleged she was a member of the underground spy organization headed by her husband. Military court sentenced her to death. Arsenyev's daughter Natalya also was arrested in April 1941 and sent to the GULAG.