Krasheninnikov, Stepan Petrovich

Born Oct. 31 (Nov. 11), 1711, in Moscow; died Feb. 25 (Mar. 8), 1755, in St. Petersburg. Russian scholar and scientist, explorer of Kamchatka. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1750). Associate of M. V. Lomonosov.

From 1724 to 1732, Krasheninnikov studied at the Moscow Slavic, Greek, and Latin Academy and in 1732–33 at the University of St. Petersburg. He took part in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43). From 1733 to 1736 he traveled in Siberia, and from 1737 to 1741 he explored the Kamchatka Peninsula. Krasheninnikov’s first scholarly works, Description of the People of Kamchatka and On the Conquest of the Land of Kamchatka, were based on the materials that he collected. In 1749 he began to study the flora of St. Petersburg Province (The Flora oflngria, 1761, in Latin). In 1751 he completed his work Description of the Land of Kamchatka, which consisted of individual works on Kamchatka. It was the first work on Kamchatka devoted to its geography and a description of the everyday life, the history, and the languages of the local inhabitants (chiefly ItePmens). An island near Kamchatka, a cape on Karagin Island, and a mountain on Kamchatka near Kronotskoe Lake were named after Krasheninnikov.