Langsdorf, Grigorii

Langsdorf, Grigorii Ivanovich 

(Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff). Born Apr. 18, 1774, in Wöllstein, Germany; died June 29, 1852, in Freiburg, Germany. Naturalist and ethnographer; active member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1821). German by birth.

Langsdorf studied at the University of Göttingen. In 1803–06 he undertook a voyage on the sloop Nadezhda (under the command of I. F. Kruzenshtern) from Copenhagen around Cape Horn to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii, Japan, and the northwest coast of America. In 1807 he completed his trip around the world by journeying across Siberia from Okhotsk to St. Petersburg. Langsdorf was appointed Russian consul to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 1812. From 1821 to 1828 he led a Russian expedition into the interior regions of Brazil to study the natural features and indigenous population of the country and gathered large zoological and botanical collections. The expedition’s materials on the culture and languages of the Indians of Brazil (Guaná, Apiaca, Bororo) are of great value.

WORKS

Bemerkungen auf einer Reise um die Welt in Jahren 1803 bis 1807, vols. 1–2. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1812.

REFERENCES

Manizer, G. G. Ekspeditsiia akademika G. I. Langsdorfa ν Braziliiu (1821–1828). Moscow, 1948.
Langsdorff, G. H. von. Eine Reise um die Welt. Edited by H. Damm. Leipzig, 1952.