Grigory Langsdorff
Baron Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff (also Langsdorf, Russian and Grigori Ivanovich Langsdorf, Григорий Иванович Лангсдорф; born April 18, 1774 Wöllstein, Rheinhessen, † June 29, 1852 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German - Russian doctor, naturalist and explorer. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Langsd. ".
Life
Was Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff birthplace Wöllstein in the former Duchy of Nassau- Usingen. His father, Johann Gottlieb Emil, was bailiff in Lahr and last Vice - Chancellor on Cassationshof of the Grand Duchy of Baden in Bruchsal. The family had not made use of the nobility, that her due since 1375; several members of the family, among them Georg Heinrich, but renewed their nobility through personal merits or by the special favor of their rulers.
Langsdorff visited the school to Buchsweiler in Alsace and the gymnasium in Idstein. In Göttingen he took up the study of medicine and graduated in 1797 as a 23 -year-old with a doctorate. Then he accompanied the Prince Christian August of Waldeck -Pyrmont (1744-1798) to Lisbon and entered after the death of the Prince in 1801 as a physician in the service of the auxiliary troops in the campaign against Spain. After the Peace of Amiens in March 1802, he returned to Germany. Through the acquired here contacts with Russian scientists, he participated in the Krusenstern 's expedition to Russian America and Japan with the sailing vessel Nadezhda part. His impressions and experiences from the research trip, he held in his two-volume observations firmly on a trip around the world in the years 1803-1807. They appeared in 1812 in Frankfurt am Main. In Volume 1, the impressions are portrayed as participants in the Russian circumnavigation under Adam Johann von Krusenstern ( 1770-1846 ). His reports are among the earliest and best scientific sources about this area. The books contain many panels with vivid illustrations (including also the first view of San Francisco).
After his return he was Councilor and adjunct at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
From 1813 acted Langsdorff addition to his scientific work as a Russian Consul General in Brazil. In 1822 he sailed with 90 recruited emigrants, with the possibility of two-wheeled inventor Karl Drais as a land surveyor, to his estate Mandioca near Rio de Janeiro. 1824 to 1828 he undertook a multi-year expedition to Brazil in which he dangerously ill, had to stop, to return to Germany. His handwritten reports, diaries and illustrations for this expedition are kept in the State Archive of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In Brazil, Langsdorff collected insects, birds and plants. From Langsdorff first described species in the biological nomenclature with the abbreviation " Langsd. " Provided.
Already in 1808 he had been appointed a corresponding member of the Mathematics and Physics Class of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, in 1823 he was appointed foreign members.
Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff died 1852 in Freiburg on its typhoid fever, of which he had never fully recovered from his expedition to Brazil.
One of his sons was Georg von Langsdorff, who participated in the Revolution of 1848 and later worked for the prophylaxis in dentistry.
Honors
The plant genus Langsdorffia Mart. has been named after him. Furthermore, the moss species Mittenothamnium langsdorffii Hook were. and Thamniopsis langsdorffii Hook. named in his honor.
In his birthplace Wöllstein the name of a street reminiscent of the scientists.
Works
- Remarks on a trip around the world in the years 1803 to 1807, 2 volumes, Frankfurt am Main 1812 ( Abridged version also as an e- text )
- Remarks about Brazil. With careful instruction for emigrating German, Heidelberg 1821 ( digitized is in Goettingen in progress)