Johann Anton Güldenstädt (1745 - 1781)

Johann Anton Güldenstädt

Johann Anton Güldenstädt was a Russian scientist, naturalist and traveler born of Baltic Germans.

Born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, Güldenstädt studied pharmacy, botany and natural history in Berlin from 1763. At the age of 22, he earned a doctorate in medicine from the University of Frankfurt. The following year he became a member of an expedition of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences sent by Catherine the Great to explore the southern borders of the Russian Empire.

Güldenstädt traveled through Ukraine and the Astrakhan region, as well as the North Caucasus and Georgia. In March 1775 the scientist returned to St. Petersburg. The results of this expedition were published after his premature death from typhoid fever at the age of 36.

This expedition made a great contribution in the fields of biology, geology, geography and especially linguistics. Guldenstedt made detailed notes on the languages of the region. Güldenstädt's materials are still constantly consulted by linguists. Dictionaries of one and a half dozen languages and dialects of the Caucasian peoples compiled by him 250 years ago serve as a valuable basis for research in linguistics and toponymy. He was one of the first European scholars to study the life and culture of the Kumyks, Ingush, Ossetians, Chechens and other North Caucasian peoples.

Güldenstädt was also the first to describe and characterize the soils, vegetation and fauna of the South Russian steppes, and one of the first to explain the origin of black soil.