Matvei Matveevich Gedenshtrom

(Hedenstrom). Born circa 1780; died Sept. 20, 1845, in Tomsk. Russian explorer of Northern Siberia.

Gedenshtrom led an expedition in 1808-10 with geodesist P. Pshenitsyn and land surveyor I. Kozhevin to explore the Novosibirsk (New Siberian) Islands. The question of the so-called Sannikov Land, supposedly sighted by la. Sannikov (one of the members of the expedition) to the northwest of Kotel’nyi Island, first arose with the Gedenshtrom expedition. Gedenshtrom established the presence of the “Siberian polynya”—a large expanse of open water at the boundary of the drift ice and the continental shore ice. He described the seacoast between the mouths of the lana and Kolyma Rivers, and he made many trips through Yakutia and Transbaikalia.