Benedikt Dybowski

Dybowski, Benedikt 

(also Venedikt Ivanovich Dybovskii). Born Apr. 30, 1833, in Minsk Province; died Jan. 30, 1930, in L’vov. Polish zoologist; member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1884).

Dybowski studied medicine and the natural sciences at Dorpat (Tartu, 1851-57), Breslau (Wroclaw) (1857-58), and Berlin (1858-60). He became a professor in the subdepartment of zoology at the University of Warsaw in 1862. In 1864 he was exiled to eastern Siberia for his participation in the Polish Uprising of 1863. In Siberia, with the support of the Eastern Siberia Division of the Russian Geographical Society, he began to study the fauna of the Baikal Region. He described the fauna of Lake Baikal and its natural conditions, as well as the fauna of the Amur basin, of the shores of the Sea of Japan, and of the Kamchatka Peninsula. He gathered a large collection of representatives of the fauna of Siberia. In 1877, Dybowski went to Poland, but in 1878 he returned to Russia. From 1879 he worked as a physician in Petropavlovsk-na-Kamchatke, where he continued his zoo-geographical investigations. From 1883 to 1906, Dybowski headed the department of zoology at the University of L’vov.

WORKS

“Ryby sistemy vod Baikala.” Izv. Sibirskogo otdela Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1876, vol. 7, no. 1.
“Ryby sistemy vod Amura.” Ibid., 1877, vol. 8, no. 1-2.

REFERENCE

Laptev, S. N. “Materialy k biografii i naucho-issledovatel’skoi deiatel’nosti B. I. Dybovskogo v Vostochnoi Sibiri.” Izvestiia Gos. geograficheskogo ob-va, 1939, vol. 71, part 6.