Date of birth unknown; died July 4 (15), 1770, in Kamchatka. Russian navigator, explorer of the Aleutian Islands. Captain.
From 1764 to 1769, Krenitsyn (assisted by M. D. Levashov) led an expedition that left the mouth of the Kamchatka River in 1768 and explored the islands of Umnak, Unalaska, and Unimak and the western shores of the Alaska Peninsula. The expedition returned to Kamchatka in 1769, and in 1770 Krenitsyn drowned in the Kamchatka River. The materials of the expedition were sent to St. Petersburg, where they were used in compiling a map of the Aleutian Islands that appeared in 1777. A strait between the islands of Onekotan and Kharimkotan (Kuril Islands), a volcano and cape on Onekotan Island, and islands in the Fox group (of the Aleutian Islands) are named after Krenitsyn.