The contributions of Karl Ernst von Baer to the investigation of the physical geography of the Arctic in the 1830s–40s

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Tammiksaar, Erki
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2002
• Subjects: Arctic; Novaya Zemlya; permafrost; Polar Record; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400017514; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400017514

Abstract Although more widely known as the founder of modern embryology, Karl Ernst von Baer played a special role in the investigation of the physical geography of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century. Baer not only conducted his own scientific research in the Arctic, he was also a key supporter and organiser of other Russian expeditions to the far north. Baer carried out the first investigations of the physical geography, flora, and fauna of Novaya Zemlya, and it was due to his work that the first precise data on the climate of the Russian Arctic appeared in the scientific literature in Europe. He can also be considered the founder of geocryology, as he not only wrote the first theoretical survey on Siberian permafrost, but was the initiator and organiser of the first expedition, under the leadership of Alexander Theodor von Middendorff, that was launched with the task of studying that phenomenon in Siberia. Baer was instrumental in the restoration of the tradition of Russian Arctic exploration, which had died out at the end of the eighteenth century; it was at his initiative that the Russian Geographical Society — which later became the leader in Russian Arctic exploration — was founded in 1845.