Pallas, Peter

Pallas, Peter, b 22 September 1741 in Berlin, d 8 September 1811 in Berlin. German naturalist and explorer. In 1766, after being educated in Germany, Holland, and England, he was elected an inaugurate member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1793–4 he traveled in the Volga region, northern Caucasia, and the Crimea. On his travels he collected geological, paleontological, geographical, botanical, zoological, and ethnographic data, which he later published. Pallas’s major works include the three-volume Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reiches in den Jahren 1768–73 (1771–6), which was translated into Russian (1773–88), Flora Rossica (2 vols, 1774–88), and a comparative dictionary of all languages and dialects (2 vols, 1787–9). His works contained the best information at that time on Ukraine’s flora and fauna.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]