Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt
Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (* September 16 1685 Danzig. . † 25 Märzjul / April 5 1735greg Saint Petersburg ) was a physician and naturalist. He opened up on behalf of Russian emperor Peter I. seven year journey nature and landscape of Siberia.
Life
He studied from 1706 to 1708 in Jena and 1708 in Halle different subjects, including mathematics, physics, botany and medicine. In May 1713 he received his doctorate of medicine and then opened a practice in his hometown. Significant influence on his thinking gained while studying the medical Friedrich Hoffmann ( in which he also received his doctorate ) and Georg Ernst Stahl, but also the polymath Christian Wolff and the theologian August Hermann Franke. Among his acquaintances also belonged to the naturalist Johann Philipp Breyne, which is a famous natural history cabinet headed in Gdansk, which Emperor Peter I visited in 1716. During the visit, Messerschmidt was recommended by Breyne the Russian emperor as an outstanding scientist, whereupon Messerschmidt traveled to St. Petersburg, and in 1718 entered the Russian service.
In November 1718, he was given by Dr. Lawrence Blumentrost, the representative of the highest Medizinalbehörde of the empire, a contract and comprehensive instructions for a multi-year research and collecting trip through Siberia. Its activities should mainly include six areas of responsibility:
- Geography
- Natural history
- Medicine ( folk medicine remedies customer, epidemic diseases, etc.)
- International law and philology of the Siberian nation
- Monuments and other antiquities
- Others
They started the journey to Moscow and Kazan to Tobolsk, where he arrived in December 1719 and had a first stay of 14 months. In March 1721, the next stage on various water and land on Tara to Tomsk and from there went on about Kuznetsk to Abakan, where 1721/22 Quarter was based initially in the winter. On this trip, the Swedish captain and explorer Johann Philipp Tabbert accompanied him had learned (later of Strahlenberg ), he know in Tobolsk and appreciate. The onward journey came to water on the Yenisei in Krasnoyarsk, finally we went to the river Kemtschuk ( a small tributary of the Yenisei River ). While Tabbert now separated from the expedition and traveled back to Sweden, it went for Messerschmidt on land and river (including Chulym (Ob) ) on and then back to winter quarters (1722 /23) to Krasnoyarsk. 1723 led the journey via an intermediate station in Lensk to Irkutsk, followed by a crossing of Lake Baikal 1724. Journey took in the summer on the Siberian steppes of the Uda and the Onon to Inner Mongolia to Lake Dalai - Nor. Finally, the journey led by the Sino- Mongolian border region in the South Siberian mountains. In the province of Transbaikalia ( in Tschitinsk ) once more was made about winter quarters before the trip back went to St. Petersburg, where the expedition arrived on March 18, 1727.
In St. Petersburg, the researcher was not received as he had expected. On the one hand, he was rewarded with only 200 rubles silver against the promised 500 silver rubles per year. In addition, he had all his notes and diaries in the meantime founded the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, left with the obligation itself not to publish anything.
From his records show that Messerschmidt during his trip descriptions and materials to around 265 species of birds, 80 species of mammals and 60 species of fish delivered, also he made ten detailed section logs of large mammals on. Large collections of insects and plants, minerals and fossils belong to its documents, also many archaeological and ethnographic observations have survived.
This information was the printed later diaries, partly in already systematically arranged " extracts " and catalogs described. This first systematic inventory of species of an area, which included ten lengths and nine degrees of latitude, with careful environmental and climatic information, which created favorable conditions for many other research expeditions of the 18th century.
The services Messerschmidt were known only through the publications of his Swedish travel companions Tabbert 1730.
Messerschmidt came after he spent two years in Russia, where he married in 1729 Brigitte Helene Böchler, in the fall of 1729 in his native city of Danzig. On the journey he lost in a shipwreck of all his possessions, and in particular his remaining notes and records. From the change in Gdansk disappointed, he returned in 1731 already back to St. Petersburg, where he devoted himself until his death on March 25, 1735, the order of his collections. Various animal and plant drawings, which he had make by the painter Georg Gsell, however, were destroyed in the fire of the Academy in 1747.
His records have been used by various researchers as the basis for further expeditions and research, including Johann Georg Gmelin, Johann Amman, Georg Wilhelm Steller, Peter Simon Pallas and Johann Gottlieb Georgi. For historians like Gerhard Friedrich Müller and Vasily Tatishchev his research were valuable, as for the ethnography, were able to use in the study of Asian languages , which were carefully documented by Messerschmidt, on his records. The Palaeozoology of Georges Cuvier was founded by his mammoth Fund.
In his honor, was named a department of the plant family Sebastiana by Carolus Linnaeus Messerschmidia and there is named after him asteroid ( 16450 ) Messerschmidt.