Eduard Toll
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Eduard Vasiliyevich Toll (Russian: Эдуард Васильевич Толль) (March 2(14), 1858, Reval - 1902, Arctic Ocean) was a Russian geologist and Arctic explorer.
Eduard Toll was born to a Baltic German family in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia) which then belonged to Imperial Russia. He graduated from the University of Dorpat (Tartu) in 1882. In 1885-1886, he took part in an expedition to the New Siberian Islands, organized by the Petersburg Academy of Sciences and led by Alexander Bunge. Eduard Toll explored the Great Lyakhovsky Island, Bunge Land, Faddeyevsky Island, Kotelny Island, and western shores of the New Siberia Island. In 1893, he led an expedition of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the northern parts of Yakutia and explored the region between the lower reaches of the Lena and Khatanga Rivers. Eduard Toll was the first one to map the plateau between the Anabar and Popigai Rivers and a mountain ridge between the Olenek and Anabar Rivers (which he named after Vasily Pronchischev). In 1899, he took part in a voyage of the icebreaker Yermak under the command of Stepan Makarov to the shores of Spitsbergen.
In 1900-1902, Eduard Toll headed an expedition of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the New Siberian Islands on a schooner Zarya (Заря). The main aim of the expedition was to find the legendary Sannikov Land. During this voyage and especially during their winterings near the northwestern part of the Taymyr Peninsula and western part of the Kotelny Island, Eduard Toll conducted an extensive hydrographical, geographical, and geological research. In November of 1902, while travelling away from the Bennett Island towards south on loose ice, Eduard Toll and three of his companions vanished without a trace. The rescue expedition headed by the naval commander Aleksandr Kolchak found the diaries and the collections of the Zarya expedition, but was not able to find Eduard Toll and his party.
Mountains on Novaya Zemlya and Bennett Island, a gulf at the northwestern shore of the Taymyr Peninsula, a cape on the Tsirkul Island in the Minin Skerries, and a plateau on the Kotelny Island are named after Eduard Toll.
