Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kots (German form Alexander Erich Kohts) (19 April 1880 – 7 September 1964) was a Soviet and Russian zoologist and founding director of the State Darwin Museum in Moscow. His wife was the animal behaviourist Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts.

Kots was born in

Borisoglebsk Borisoglebsk (russian: Борисогле́бск) is a town in Voronezh Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Vorona River near its confluence with the Khopyor. Population: 65,000 (1969). History Borisoglebsk was founded in 164 ...

, Tambov to Berlin-born linguist and botanist Alfred Kots and Evgenia (Johanna) Alexandrovna née Grassman. He began to collect natural history specimens at a young age and was educated at the Moscow classical gymnasium. He learned to stuff and prepare animal specimens from F. Yuri Felman and received a gold medal for his taxidermy in 1896. With references from Theodore K. Lorenz and

Mikhail Menzbier Mikhail Aleksandrovich Menzbier (Russian: Михаил Александрович Мензбир; 23 October 1855 – 10 October 1935) was a Russian ornithologist. Based in Moscow, he was a founding member of Russia's first ornithological body, ...

he went on a scientific expedition to Western Siberia in 1899 and collected a large number of specimens for which he received a silver medal from the Russian Society for Acclimatization of Animals and Plants. He joined Moscow University in 1901 and between his studies he made a trip to European museum and graduated in 1906. He then worked with Mikhail Menzbir. In 1907 he began to teach evolution to women at Moscow university at the invitation of

Petr Sushkin Petr Petrovich Sushkin (russian: Петр Петрович Сушкин; 27 January 1868 – 17 September 1928) was a Russian ornithologist who specialised on comparative anatomy, and evolution of birds, particularly of the birds of prey. Sushkin ...

and

Nikolai Koltsov Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (russian: Николай Константинович Кольцов; July 14, 1872 – December 2, 1940) was a Russian biologist and a pioneer of modern genetics. Among his students were Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovs ...

. In 1909 the collections of Theodore K. Lorenz were passed on to him and he then began to establish a small museum which became the Darwin Museum in 1922. He married Nadezhda Nikolayevna Ladygina, one of his students, in 1911 and they had a son who they named as Rudolf after

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a ...

who greatly influenced them. Kots taught at the Moscow University, the Military Pedagogical Academy, gave numerous popular lectures, was a director of Moscow Zoo, and the Darwin Museum. After his death there was a plan to dissolve the museum but it was saved by V. N. Ignatijeva.

References

External links

Moscow University biography
(in Russian)
Biographical film by Aleksandr's son Rudolf Kots (in Russian with English subtitles)

Farewell speech by Aleksandr
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kots, Aleksandr 1880 births 1964 deaths People from Borisoglebsk Professors of the Moscow State University Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Russian naturalists Russian zoologists Soviet zoologists