Georg Wilhelm Steller (10 March 1709 – 14 November 1746) was a German botanist, zoologist, physician and explorer, who worked in Russia and is considered the discoverer of Alaska and a pioneer of Alaskan natural history.
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Steller was born in Windsheim, near Nuremberg in Germany, son to Johann Jakob Stöhler (after 1715, Stöller), and studied at the University of Wittenberg. He then traveled to Russia, arriving in November 1734. He met the naturalist Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (1685–1735) at the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Two years after Messerschmidt's death, Steller married his widow and acquired notes from his travels in Siberia not handed over to the academy.[1]
Steller heard about Vitus Bering’s Second Kamchatka Expedition, that had already left St Petersburg in February 1733. He volunteered to join it and was accepted. He then left St Petersburg in January 1738, met Johann Georg Gmelin in Yeniseisk in January 1739, and finally reached Okhotsk and the main expedition in March 1740.
In September 1740, the expedition sailed to the Kamchatka Peninsula. Steller spent the winter in Bolsherechye, where he helped to organize a local school. He was then appointed to join Bering on the voyage to America. The expedition landed in Alaska at Kayak Island on Monday 20 July 1741, wanting only to stay long enough to take on fresh water. Steller forced Captain Bering to give him more time for his expedition and was granted 10 hours. During this time, as the first non-native to have set foot upon Alaskan soil, Steller became the first European naturalist to describe a number of North American plants and animals, including a jay later named Steller's Jay.
Of the 6 species of birds and mammals that were discovered by and, generally, named after the star-crossed scientist, two are extinct (the Steller's sea cow and the Spectacled Cormorant), and three are endangered or in severe decline (Steller's sea lion, Steller's Eider and Steller's Sea Eagle). The sea cow, in particular, a massive northern relative of the manatee, lasted barely 25 years after Steller discovered and named it, a victim of the rapacious otter-hunting Russian crews that followed in Bering's wake. To be named after this unfortunate man was to be doomed to a precarious existence at best, or perhaps a death sentence.
The exception, the only species that is still around in any numbers, is the instantly recognizable and mischievous Steller's Jay. In his brief encounter with the bird – he had been allowed a mere 10 hours to go ashore and collect specimens when Bering's ship made initial landfall in Alaska – Steller was able to deduce that the jay was kin to the American Blue Jay, which convinced him that Alaska was indeed part of North America. In the years since, while the other species associated with him by name have become more scarce or have disappeared altogether, the Steller's Jay is still around.
On the return journey the expedition was shipwrecked on what later became known as Bering Island. Here Bering died, and almost half of the crew perished from scurvy. The remaining men settled with little food or water to survive the winter, the camp plagued by arctic foxes. Despite the hardships of overwintering, Steller studied the flora, fauna, and topography of the island in great detail. Notably, he collected the only detailed behavioral and anatomical observations of Steller's sea cow, a large sirenian mammal whose global range was confined to the shallow kelp beds around the Commander Islands, and which was driven to extinction within 30 years of discovery by Europeans.
Based on these and other observations, Steller later wrote De Bestiis Marinis (‘On the Beasts of the Sea’)., describing the fauna of the island, including the Northern fur seal, the sea otter, Steller's sea lion, Steller's sea cow, Steller's Eider and the Spectacled Cormorant. Steller claimed the only recorded sighting of the marine cryptid Steller's sea ape.
In the spring of 1742 the crew constructed a new vessel to return to Avacha Bay and nicknamed it The Bering. Steller spent the next two years exploring the Kamchatka peninsula. He was recalled to Saint Petersburg but caught a fever on the journey and died at Tyumen.
His journals did reach the Academy and were published by Peter Simon Pallas and were later used by other explorers of the North Pacific, including Captain Cook.
There is a secondary school in Anchorage, Alaska named after him: Steller Secondary School.
Animals and plants named after Georg Steller include:
Steller's Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska