Johann Georg Gmelin

Born Aug. 12, 1709, in Tübingen; died there May 20, 1755. Naturalist, Siberian traveler; academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1731).

Gmelin came to Russia from Germany in 1727. Between 1733 and 1743 his travels took him to Tobol’sk, Semipalatinsk, Ust’-Kamenogorsk, Kuznetsk, Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, Turukhansk, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk; he returned to St. Petersburg by way of Tomsk and Verkhotur’e. The Academy of Sciences published Gmelin’s four-volume work The Flora of Siberia between 1747 and 1769. In 1747 he went to Germany, where he published his journals under the title Journey Through Siberia (vols. 1-4, Göttingen, 1751), which was later translated into many European languages.