Köppen, Peter

Köppen, Peter or Keppen, Petrо [Кеппен, Петро], b 2 March 1793 in Kharkiv, d 4 June 1864 in Karabah, Yalta county, Tavriia gubernia. Statistician, bibliographer, geographer, and ethnographer; full member of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences. From 1829 to 1834 he worked in the Crimea and traveled annually through southern Ukraine, where he collected a great deal of information on its geography and natural history. Among his numerous works are an ethnographic map of Russia (1851), pioneering population studies of Russia, studies of Tavriia gubernia, and Materiialy dlia istorii prosveshcheniia v Rosii (Materials for the History of Education in Russia, 3 vols, 1819, 1825, 1827). His research served as the model for the 69-volume register of the Russian Empire’s towns and villages.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]