Alexander von Middendorff
Baltic German explorer and scientist (1815-1894)
Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (Russian: Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ми́ддендорф, romanized: Aleksandr Fyodorovich Middendorf; 18 August 1815 – 24 January 1894) was a Russian zoologist and explorer of Baltic German and Estonian extraction. He was known for his expedition in 1843–45 to the extreme north and east of Siberia, describing the effects of permafrost on the spread of animals and plants.
Early life
Middendorff's mother, Sophia Johanson (1782–1868), the daughter of an Estonian farmer, had been sent to Saint Petersburg for education by her parents. There, she met with the future director of the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, Theodor Johann von Middendorff (1776–1856), whose father was a Baltic German pastor in Karuse, then part of the Governorate of Estonia. As the two young people came from different social ranks and were unable to marry each other, their daughter Anette (b. 1809) and son Alexander were born out of wedlock. Alexander was born on 18 August 1815 in St. Petersburg, but could not be baptized until six months later in the Estonian Lutheran Congregation of St. Petersburg, as the German Lutheran Congregation of St.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q461620. VIAF identifies the subject as 15574986. The Library of Congress control number is n94072176. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1815, 1894, 1843 and 1782.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander von Middendorff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.