Benedykt Tadeusz Dybowski (12 May 183331 January 1930) was a Polish naturalist and

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

Life

Benedykt Dybowski was born in Adamaryni, within the

Minsk Governorate The Minsk Governorate (russian: Минская губерния, Belarusian: ) or Government of Minsk was a governorate ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire. The seat was in Minsk. It was created in 1793 from the land acquired in the partiti ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

to Polish nobility. He was the brother of naturalist Władysław Dybowski and the cousin of the French explorer Jean Dybowski. He studied at Minsk High School, and later medicine at

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

(earlier Dorpat) University in present-day

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

. He later studied at Wroclaw University and went on expeditions to seek and study oceanic fishes and

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...

s. He became a professor of zoology at the Warsaw main school. In 1864 he was arrested and condemned to death for taking part in the Polish

January Uprising The January Uprising ( pl, powstanie styczniowe; lt, 1863 metų sukilimas; ua, Січневе повстання; russian: Польское восстание; ) was an insurrection principally in Russia's Kingdom of Poland that was aimed at ...

. His sentence was later reduced to 12 years in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

. He started studying the natural history of Siberia and in 1866 a governor Muraviov dismissed Dybowski from hard labour (''

katorga Katorga ( rus, ка́торга, p=ˈkatərɡə; from medieval and modern Greek: ''katergon, κάτεργον'', " galley") was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Pris ...

''), renewed his civil rights and proposed him to work as a doctor in hospital. He later settled in the small village Kultuk and began a detailed study of Baikal Lake with some technical support from the

Russian Geographical Society The Russian Geographical Society (russian: Ру́сское географи́ческое о́бщество «РГО»), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection wi ...

. He served as a medical doctor for the indigenous population of Kamchatka, the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a chain of 14 large v ...

, the Commander Islands, Bering Island, making four trips per year around the populated areas there. After returning from Asia he continued research work at

Lwów University The University of Lviv ( uk, Львівський університет, Lvivskyi universytet; pl, Uniwersytet Lwowski; german: Universität Lemberg, briefly known as the ''Theresianum'' in the early 19th century), presently the Ivan Franko Na ...

(Lemberg). He was a president of the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists (1886–87). In 1927 the Academy of Sciences in the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

elected Dybowski as a member-correspondent. Apart from that in 1921 Dybowski was given an honorary doctorate by the Warsaw's University, and in 1923 by the University of Wilno. On Dybowski's 95th birthday he was congratulated by the Shevchenko Scientific Society government. Dybowski spent the last years of his life in

Lwów Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...

. Dybowski died at the age of 97. He is buried in

(present-day Lviv) on the Łyczakowski Cemetery among the participants of the Polish Uprising of 1863. Most of his collection of zoological and botanical specimens is now in the Lwów Zoological museum. An

amphipod Amphipoda is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods range in size from and are mostly detritivores or scavengers. There are more than 9,900 amphipod species so far descri ...

(''Gammaracanthuskytodermogammarus loricatobaicalensis''), supposedly from Lake Baikal and named by him was once considered the longest scientific name. However, that name is no longer considered valid. In February 2014, traveller Jacek Pałkiewicz unveiled a memorial plaque to Dybowski in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski.Pałkiewicz odsłania tablicę Dybowskiego na Kamczatce
at Rzeczpospolita, 6 February 2014.

References

External links

Biography

The diary of Dr. Benedykt Dybowski from 1862 until 1878

"Dybowski 1863"
short movie by Maciej Pawlicki about the Dybowskis's arrest and the death penalty trial for taking part in the 1863 Polish

against the occupying

at the Warsaw Main School while being the assistant professor there.
1957 Polish 2.50 zloty postage stamp with Benedykt Dybowski
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dybowski, Benedykt 1833 births 1930 deaths People from Valozhyn District People from Vileysky Uyezd People from the Russian Empire of Polish descent Polish naturalists Polish general practitioners Explorers of Siberia January Uprising participants Polish exiles in the Russian Empire University of Warsaw faculty Members of the Lwów Scientific Society Members of the Polish Academy of Learning Burials at Lychakiv Cemetery

Life

See also

References

External links