Dvigubskii, Ivan Alekseevich

Born Feb. 24 (Mar. 7), 1771 (according to other data 1772), in Korocha, in present-day Kursk Oblast; died Dec. 30, 1839 (Jan. 11, 1840), in Kashira. Russian naturalist.

Dvigubskii graduated from Moscow University (1796), where he became a junior scientific assistant in 1798 and a professor in 1807 and was rector during 1826–33. In 1802 he received the degree of doctor of medicine for research on the fauna of the Moscow area. In 1805 he traveled through southern Russia and gathered rich collections of insects and plants, which he gave to Moscow University. (In 1812, during the Moscow fire, the collections were destroyed.) He compiled the first guide in the Russian language to the wild flora of Moscow Province (1828) and a guide to predominantly domestic medicinal plants (in four parts, 1828–34). Dvigubskii was the first to attempt a complete description of Russian fauna (1817–18), and he compiled an encyclopedia of practical information on agriculture and domestic science (in 12 volumes, 1836–40). In 1807–08, Dvigubskii compiled and published the first Russian textbook on technology, in which he set forth the state of the chemical industry at the beginning of the 19th century. He also wrote one of the first Russian physics textbooks (1808, 3rd ed., parts 1–2, 1824–25).