| Peter Simon Pallas |
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| german botanists | |
| pallas, peter simon | |
| german zoologists | |
| german ornithologists | |
| arachnologists | |
| german russians | |
| 1741 births | |
| 1811 deaths | |
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Peter Simon Pallas ( September 22 , 1741 , Berlin — September 8 , 1811 , Berlin) was a German Zoologist and Botanist who worked in Russia . Pallas was born in Berlin , the son of a Professor of Surgery. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in Natural History , later attending the University Of Halle and the University Of Göttingen . In 1760 he moved to the University Of Leiden and passed his doctor's degree at the age of nineteen. He travelled throughout the Netherlands and to London , improving his medical and surgical knowledge. He then settled at The Hague , and his new system of animal classification was praised by Georges Cuvier . He wrote ''Miscellania Zoologica'' (1766), which included the descriptions of several vertebrates new to science which he had discovered in the Dutch museum collections. A planned voyage to southern Africa and the East Indies fell through when his father recalled him to Berlin. Here he began work on his ''Spicilegia Zoologica'' (1767-80). In 1767 Pallas was invited by Catherine II Of Russia to became a professor at the St Petersburg Academy Of Sciences , and between 1769 and 1774 he led an expedition to Siberia collecting natural history specimens on their behalf. He explored the upper Amur , the Caspian Sea , and the Ural and Altai Mountains , reaching as far eastward as Lake Baikal . Between 1793 and 1794 he led a second expedition to southern Russia , visiting the Crimea and the Black Sea . In 1772 Pallas was shown a 700 kilogram lump of metal which had been found near to the city of Krasnoyarsk . Pallas arranged for it to be transported back to St Petersburg. Subsequent analysis of the metal showed that it was a new type of stony-iron Meteorite . This new type of meteorites are called Pallasite s after him whereas the meteorite itself is today named ''Krasnoyarsk'' or sometimes also called ''Pallas Iron'' (the name given to it by Ernst Chladni in 1794). A number of animals are named after him, including Pallas's Cat , Pallas's Warbler , Pallas's Gull , Pallas's Sandgrouse , Pallas's Reed Bunting and Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler . A street in Berlin is named Pallas Straße. |
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