Eduard Vasilevich Toll

Born Mar. 2 (14), 1858, in Tallinn; died 1902. Russian geologist and arctic explorer.

Toll’ graduated from the University of Dorpat (now Tartu) in 1882. In 1885 and 1886 he took part in an expedition to the Novo-sibirskie Islands that was organized by the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and led by A. A. Bunge; Toll’ explored Bol’shoi Liakhovskii Island, Bunge Land, Faddeevskii Island, the west coast of Novaia Sibir’ Island, and Kotel’nyi Island. In 1893 an expedition led by Toll’ was sent by the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the northern regions of Yakutia to explore the area between the lower courses of the Lena and Khatanga rivers. Toll’ was the first to describe the upland plain between the Anabar and Popigai rivers and the ridge between the Olenek and Anabar rivers, which was named V. Pronchishchev Ridge by Toll’. In 1899, Toll’ took part in the voyage of the icebreaker Ermak, under the command of S. O. Makarov, to the coast of Spitsbergen.

From 1900 to 1902, Toll’ headed an expedition, organized by the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, on the auxiliary-powered schooner Zaria to the Novosibirskie Islands. During the voyage, and especially when the schooner wintered off the northwest coast of the Taimyr Peninsula and the west coast of Kotel’nyi Island, he carried out a series of hydrographic, physico-geographic, and geological investigations. Toll’ and three of his companions disappeared while attempting to travel southward from Bennett Island across thin ice.

A mountain on Novaia Zemlia, a mountain on Bennett Island, a bay on the northwest coast of the Taimyr Peninsula, a cape on Tsiricul’ Island in the Minin Skerries, and a plateau on Kotel’nyi Island have been named after Toll’.