The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
1709-1755
German Explorer and Botanist
During the period from 1733 to 1743, German botanist Johann Georg Gmelin explored a wide area of Siberia. These expeditions yielded numerous plant specimens, which he later described in his writings. Also significant was his identification, in 1735, of permafrost, a permanent frozen layer of earth that exists in northerly regions.
Born in 1709, Gmelin (pronounced gMAY-leen) became a professor of chemistry and natural history. Like many German-speaking scientists of the eighteenth century, he was drawn eastward by a job offer from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in Russia, where he became a professor at the age of 22 in 1731.
Two years later, Gmelin began to travel much further east, as he embarked on what turned out to be a decade's worth of exploration in Siberia. His journeys took him through a number of towns and regions, including Tobolsk, Semipalatinsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk. Traveling eastward as far as the Lena River, he then began making his way back toward St. Petersburg, along the way collecting enormous numbers of specimens from the taiga and tundra.
Gmelin spent four more years at the St. Petersburg Academy, writing the vast work later published by the Academy in four volumes as Flora sibirica (1747-69). In 1749 he took a position as a professor at Tübingen in Germany, where he remained until his death in 1755. Gmelin published Journey across Siberia, his diaries of the ten-year expedition, in 1751. Translated into numerous languages, the book became a best-seller. Gmelin's nephew, Leopold Gmelin (1788-1853), later became a famous chemist and author of a definitive textbook in that discipline.