Messerschmidt, Daniel Gottlieb

Messerschmidt, Daniel Gottlieb 

Born Sept. 16, 1685, in Danzig, present-day Gdansk, Poland; died Mar. 25 (Apr. 5), 1735, in St. Petersburg. Siberian explorer. German by birth.

Messerschmidt graduated from the University of Halle in 1707. In 1716 he was invited to St. Petersburg by Peter I, on whose instructions he traveled throughout Siberia from 1720 to 1777. He studied the local peoples, their languages, literary records, and ancient monuments. He collected important data on the local natural history and ethnology and information for use in mapping the area. Messerschmidt’s account Survey of Siberia, or Three Tables of the Simple Kingdoms of Nature (10 vols.), which contains information on history, ethnology, geography, economics, and flora and fauna, long remained unpublished, but was widely used by later explorers.

WORKS

Forschungsreise durch Sibirien 1720–1727, vols. 1–4. Berlin, 1962–68. (In the series Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 8, parts 1–4.)

REFERENCES

Pekarskii, P. Nauka i literatura v Rossii pri Petre Velikom, vol. 1. St. Petersburg, 1862.
Lebedev, D. M. Geografiia v Rossiipetrovskogo vremeni. Moscow-Leningrad, 1950.
Novlianskaia, M. G. Daniil Gotlib Messershmidt i ego raboty po issledovaniiu SibirL Leningrad, 1970.