Édouard Ménétries
Édouard Ménétries (born October 2, 1802 in Paris , † April 10, 1861 in Saint Petersburg ) was a French entomologist and zoologist . He worked in Saint Petersburg and was the founder of the Russian Entomological Society.
Life
Ménétries was a student in Paris of Georges Cuvier and Pierre André Latreille , who recommended him to Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff as a participant in a Russian expedition to Brazil that took place from 1821 to 1825. He then went to St. Petersburg as curator of the zoological collection of the Kunstkammer, whose collections he arranged for the first time according to scientific criteria. From 1829 to 1830 the Academy assigned him as a scientific companion, together with Johann Georg Lenz and Adolph Theodor Kupffer, on General Immanuel's expedition to the interior of the Caucasus and Elbrus. In 1832 he became curator of the entomological department of the now Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences, of which he became a corresponding member in 1855.
He was an expert on butterflies and beetles with many initial descriptions, especially from Russia and Siberia. He also worked on specimens from other countries from the collecting trips of Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (1842 to 1845 in the north of Siberia) and Leopold von Schrenck (1853 to 1857 on the Russian Pacific coast), the doctor A. Leman (to Bukhara , Xiva ) and from S. Karelin to Kazakhstan . His collection is in Saint Petersburg.
Ménétries was dependent on the support of amateur entomologists, as he received little official help, and these took advantage of this in part to plunder the collections. Wiktor Ivanovich Motschulski (1810–1871), an entomologist and colonel, whose connection to the museum was only ended by the successor of Ménétries AF Moravits, also played an inglorious role here . Shortly before his death, the Russian Entomological Society was founded in Saint Petersburg in 1860, and he played a key role in its creation. At the inaugural meeting, he was already too sick to attend. The founders included the academy members Johann Friedrich von Brandt and Karl Ernst von Baer (the first president of the society) and the explorer Middendorff.
Later he was mainly interested in butterflies. As a herpetologist, he named some higher vertebrates such as mountain calender lark , the reed bunting Emberiza schoeniclus caspia , the marble duck , the western black-headed mosquito-eater , ravergier's angry snake and an adder's eye skink (striped adder's eye).
Memberships
When La Société Cuvierienne was founded in 1838 , he was one of the 140 founding members of the society.
Fonts
- Catalog raisonné des objets de zoologie recueillis dans un voyage au Caucase et jusqu'aux frontières de la Perse. Saint Petersburg 1832, digitized
literature
- Société Cuvierienne: List of the Premiers Fondateurs de La Société Cuvierienne, Association universelle pour l'avancement de la Zoologie, de L'Anatomie comparée et de la Palaeontologie . In: Revue Zoologique par La Société Cuvierienne . tape 1 , 1838, p. 189-192 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
Web links
- Biography of OL Kryzhanovsky (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Société Cuvierienne, p. 191.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ménétries, Édouard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French entomologist and zoologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 2, 1802 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 10, 1861 |
| Place of death | St. Petersburg |