Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin

Grigory Potanin

Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin ( Russian Григорий Николаевич Потанин ; born September 22 ^{. Jul} / 4. October  1835 ^greg. In Jamyschewskaja , near Pavlodar , Russian Empire ; † 30th June 1920 in Tomsk , RSFSR ) was a Russian explorers. He explored Mongolia and other areas of Central Asia as well as Siberia .

Life

Born the son of a Cossack officer, Potanin graduated from the cadet school in Omsk in 1852 . From 1853 he did military service in Semipalatinsk and Omsk and until 1858 participated in the development of the Altai region . From 1859 he attended the University of Saint Petersburg . After graduating in 1862, he took part in the Friedrich Struves expedition to the Irtysh and the Tarbagatai region from 1863 to 1864 , where he studied fishing in Lake Saissan and created botanical collections. In 1865 he was appointed secretary of the statistical committee in Tomsk .

Since he was anxious to move forward and believed to separate Siberia from Russia, he was denounced and sentenced to forced labor by the court. After he was pardoned in 1874, he married. In the spring of 1876 Potanin undertook an expedition to north-western Mongolia on behalf of the Geographic Society . During the two-year trip, he recorded the geographic features of the region. In 1879 a second expedition took place, which took him to the sources of the Yenisei , and he made the region known with the publications that arose from this trip.

This enabled him to collect funds, including from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, to explore the Chinese province of Gansu and the Ordos Plateau in 1884. In 1886 he devoted himself to the exploration of Tibet . Most of all, he stayed on the border with China . The members of the expedition gathered information that appeared in the records of the Geographic Society in 1893.

Because of the wealth of information obtained, it was decided to undertake a fourth expedition from 1892 to 1893, which again led to China. Via Beijing one got back into the highlands of Tibet in the province of Sichuan . There Potanin was looking for a way to get into the Tibetan highlands. However, since his wife became seriously ill, he was forced to repent. After the death of his wife he returned to Saint Petersburg . His colleagues Vladimir Obruchev and Mikhail Berezovsky continued his work. After Potanin carried out another expedition in 1899, he returned to Omsk. He participates in the Duma of the region and in 1915 became an honorary citizen of Omsk. In 1918 he received the honorary title of Citizen of Siberia .

His wife Alexandra Viktorovna Potanina , born on January 25, 1843 in Gorbatow as the daughter of the priest Viktor Lavrovsky, accompanied her husband on his travels and helped him to collect ethnographic and other materials. During the fourth trip to China she fell ill on the way to Shanghai and died on September 19, 1893 in Kjachta .

Aftermath

Potanin wrote a number of articles on the ethnography of the Mongols, Tibetans and Chinese as well as the geographical features of the areas visited.

To honor the memory of the researcher, a ridge in the province of Nan Shan , a glacier in the Altai Mountains , the asteroid (9915) Potanin and the Potaninskaya library in Novosibirsk were named after Potanin . In many Siberian cities streets are named after Potanin. A monument to him was erected in Tomsk. Karl Johann Maximowicz named the genus Potaninia from the rose family after him in honor of Potanin . He is also the namesake for the Nunatak Gora Potanina in the Antarctic.

Web links

• Potanin, Gregorij Nikolajewitsch
• Потанин Григорий Николаевич
• The Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin and Nikolai Mikhailovich Iadrintsev Collection