Nikolai Michailowitsch Knipowitsch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nikolai Michailowitsch Knipowitsch

Nikolai Mikhailovich Knipovich ( Russian Николай Михайлович Книпович ; born March 13, jul. / 25. March  1862 greg. In Sveaborg ; † 23. February 1939 in Leningrad ) was a Russian-Soviet ichthyologist and hydrologist .

Life

Early years

Knipowitsch was born in 1862 as one of five children of a military doctor in Sveaborg, today's Suomenlinna. He attended high school in Helsingfors (now Helsinki ) and graduated from the physical-mathematical faculty of the University of Saint Petersburg until 1885 . He initially stayed with Oskar Andrejewitsch Grimm (1845 / 1846–1920) at the university and undertook his first research trip to the Lower Volga . In 1887 he was arrested as a member of the social democratic group around Dimityr Blagoew and placed under police supervision for five years. Knipowitsch had to leave the university and now worked at the biological station on the island of Solowetski in the White Sea . In 1892 he submitted his master's thesis on ascothoracids - crabs living as endoparasites in echinoderms and flower animals  . He returned to the University of Saint Petersburg as a private lecturer in 1893 and became a curator at the Zoological Museum of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1894 .

The Murman Expedition 1898–1906

In contrast to the north-western European countries, Russia did not conduct any significant research into fisheries science in the northern seas at the end of the 19th century. The most important fishing waters for Russia were the Caspian Sea and inland waters . That changed only when from the autumn 1894 25 Barents Sea from cod were lost ships returning home in the White Sea during a storm. A “Committee for the Support of the Coastal Population of the Russian North” helped the affected families with partly state and partly privately collected funds. It also provided funding to prevent similar disasters and to research the fishing grounds in the Barents Sea. A long-term hydrological and fisheries-scientific expedition program was decided, the execution of which was entrusted to Knipowitsch, who was one of the first in Russia to combine oceanographic and zoological observations.

In preparation for his assignment, Knipowitsch undertook a trip through northern Europe in 1897 to familiarize himself with the latest developments in marine and fisheries research and to purchase modern equipment for the expedition. He visited most of the well-known marine biological and fishing institutions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Scotland and Germany and met their directors, including Johannes Petersen (1860–1928), Johan Hjort , Victor Hensen , Carl Apstein , Friedrich Heincke and John Murray . Even after this trip, Knipowitsch corresponded regularly with most of these scientists.

The Murman expedition (official title: "Expedition for scientific and practical investigations on the Murman coast", Russian Мурманская научно-промысловая экспедиция) began in May 1898. For this purpose, a smaller sailing ship - the schooner Soblom  - had been bought in Norway - the Pomor did a good job for a year. During this time, the expedition limited its work to the coastal waters of the Kola Peninsula , but carried out almost 500 trawls and took hundreds of water samples at depths of 0 to 250 m at defined positions. From May 1899 the steamship Andrei Perwoswanny , which was specially built for the expedition by the Bremer Vulkan shipyard , was available, with which the work was gradually extended to areas of the Barents Sea further away from the coast . In 1901 Knipowitsch created the first hydrographic map of the Barents Sea. He discovered that the Gulf Stream branches into several parallel currents in the Barents Sea, which penetrate far to the east and have a great influence on the distribution of the marine fauna. Differences of opinion with the donors, which pushed for quicker practical results for the fishing industry, meant that Knipowitsch had to leave the management of the expedition in autumn 1901 to his previous assistant Leonid Breitfuss , who was able to continue the research until 1906.

Further life

Nikolai Knipowitsch (left) with Fridtjof Nansen and Walther Bruns at the annual meeting of the Aeroarctic 1928 in Leningrad

After his replacement as leader of the Murman expedition, the evaluation and publication of the collected material remained in Knipowitsch's responsibility. He published two volumes of the expedition report and in 1905 summarized the hydrographic results for his foreign colleagues in a series of articles. In 1906 his work The foundations of the hydrology of the European Arctic Ocean appeared in Russian. In 1911 Knipowitsch was appointed professor of zoology and general biology at the Petersburg Medical Institute. He taught here until 1930.

As a Russian delegate to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), founded in 1902 , he maintained his international contacts. 1913/1914 he was vice president of this organization. Even after the First World War and the Russian October Revolution , he was a proponent of intensive international research cooperation. Despite all efforts, however, he was unable to get the Soviet Union to join ICES. On a trip to Germany in 1926, however, he agreed joint German-Soviet research activities in the Barents Sea with the German Scientific Commission for Marine Research, which took place in 1927 with the research ship Poseidon with the participation of Gerhard Schott and Bruno Schulz . Knipowitsch was also one of the Soviet representatives at the International Study Society for Exploring the Arctic with Aircraft (Aeroarctic).

Knipowitsch organized his first expedition to the Caspian Sea in 1904, which was followed by two more in 1912/1913 and 1914/1915. Following the example of the Murman expedition, he clarified the hydrological conditions and the associated distribution of marine fauna in the annual cycle. From 1905 to 1911 Knipowitsch explored the natural resources of the Baltic Sea . Research expeditions to the Azov and Blacks took him in the 1920s, and again to the Caspian Sea in 1931/1932. He published 164 scientific articles or books. He contributed around 200 articles to the Brockhaus-Efron conversation lexicon .

Nikolai Knipovich's grave in the Volkovo Cemetery, Saint Petersburg

Nikolai Knipowitsch died in Leningrad in 1939 and was buried in the Smolensk cemetery , but later reburied in the "Literatorskije mostki" honorary section of the Volkovo cemetery .

Honors

Knipowitsch was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1927 and was made an honorary member in 1935. He had been the holder of the Lütke Medal since 1902 and in 1924 received the "highest award" of the Geographical Society of the USSR , the former Konstantin Medal. The Polar Research Institute for Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO), founded in 1921, was given the nickname Knipowitsch during Knipowitsch's lifetime.

Two Soviet research ships were named after Nikolai Knipowitsch: The ice-going motor ship Nikolai Knipowitsch , built in Norway in 1928 , was the first ship to circumnavigate the Franz-Josef-Land archipelago in 1932 . The research ship Akademik Knipowitsch was involved in several expeditions to the Antarctic .

Several geographical objects in the polar regions are named after Knipowitsch :

The cities of Murmansk and Saint Petersburg named streets after Knipovich.

A genus from the goby family bears the name Knipowitschia .

Works (selection)

  • About the relict lake “ Mogilnoje ” on the island of Kildin on the Murman coast , 1895, digitized
  • A zoological excursion in the north-western part of the White Sea in the summer of 1895
  • To learn about the geological history of the fauna of the White and Murman Seas. Postpliocaene molluscs and brachiopods , 1900
  • Hydrological investigations in the European Arctic Ocean , 1905 (digital copy, part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , part 4 )
  • Osnowy gidrologii ewropeiskogo Ledowitogo okeana (German: The basics of the hydrology of the European Arctic Ocean ), 1906
  • Report on the living conditions and the catch of the Nordic seals , 1907 (with Johan Hjort)
  • On the ichthyology of the Arctic Ocean , 1907
  • Hydrobiological studies in the Caspian Sea in the years 1914–1915 , 1922
  • On the hydrology and hydrobiology of the Black and Azov Seas. Preliminary communications from the Azov expedition , 1926
  • Guide for determination of the fishes of Barents Sea, White Sea and Kara Sea , 1926
  • Gidrologija Morei i solonowatych wod w primenenii k promyslowomu delu (German: Hydrology of the seas and brackish water and its application in the fishing industry ), 1938

literature

Web links

Commons : Nikolai Knipovich  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b S. S. Nametkin, SA Sernow, AN Bach, SA Rogowin: NM Knipowitsch . In: Westnik Akademii Nauki SSSR . 7/1939, pp. 79-82 (Russian).
  2. ↑ Paul R. Josephson, Paul Josephson, Nicolai Dronin, Ruben Mnatsakanian, Aleh Cherp, Dmitry Efremenko: An Environmental History of Russia . Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-521-86958-4 , pp. 52–53 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ^ A b c Julia A. Lajus: “Foreign science” in Russian context: Murman Scientific-Fishery Expedition and Russian participation in early ICES activity (PDF; 4.86 MB). In: ICES Marine Science Symposia . Volume 215, 2002, pp. 64-72 (English).
  4. ↑ a b S. D. Stepanyants, NV Chernova, JA Lajus, KP Bjorklund: The First Russian Fisheries Research Expedition: Centenary of the Expedition for Fisheries Research along the Coast of Murman . In: Russian Journal of Marine Biology . Volume 28, No. 4, 2002, pp. 282-291 (English).
  5. ↑ Johan Hjort: NM Knipovich. 1862-1939 . In: ICES Journal of Marine Science . Volume 14, No. 3, 1939, pp. 335-336 (English). doi : 10.1093 / icesjms / 14.3.335
  6. ↑ Article Nikolai Michailowitsch Knipowitsch in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D062161~2a%3D~2b%3DNikolai%20Michailowitsch%20Knipowitsch
  7. ^ Julia Lajus: Linking People through Fish: Science and Barents Sea Fish Recorces in the Context of Russian-Scandinavian Relations . In: Sverker Sörlin (Ed.): Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden Beyond Borders . Routledge, New York and London 2016, ISBN 1-317-05892-5 , pp. 171–194 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ↑ Julia Lajus, Daniel Alexandrow: The international Cooperation in the Arctic marine research: case of the Russian-German Joint studies in the Barents Sea, 1926-27 (PDF; 38.5 MB). 20th International Polar Conference of the German Society for Polar Research, 26. – 30. March 2001 (= TERRA NOSTRA 1/2001), p. 23 f. (English).
  9. ^ Cornelia Lüdecke, Julia Lajus: The Second International Polar Year 1932–1933 . In: Susan Barr, Cornelia Lüdecke (Ed.): The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs) . Springer, Berlin and Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-642-12401-3 , pp. 135–174 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ↑ Knipovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich at www.encyclopedia.com (English).
  11. ↑ List of medal holders of the Russian Geographical Society (1845-2012) (PDF; 580 kB), accessed on June 10, 2018 (Russian).
  12. ↑ Andreas Umbreit: Chronicle of the Franz-Joseph-Land on the website www.franz-josef-land.info , accessed on June 9, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Knipowitsch, Nikolai Michailowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Книпович, Николай Михайлович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-Soviet ichthyologist and hydrologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Sveaborg
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1939
Place of death Leningrad