Jan Stanisław Franciszek Czerski (Russian: Иван Дементьевич Черский, Ivan Dementyevich Chersky; Lithuanian: Jonas Čerskis; Belarusian: Ян Чэрскi) (1845–1892) was a Polish[1] paleontologist (osteologist), geologist, geographer and explorer of Siberia. He was exiled to Transbaikalia for participation in the January Uprising of 1863.[1] A self-taught scientist, he eventually received three gold medals from the Russian Geographical Society, and his name was given to a settlement, two mountain ranges, several peaks and other places. He authored the first map of Lake Baikal and died during an expedition to Kolyma.[1]
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Son of Dominik and Xenia Czerski, a family of Polish nobles (szlachta) he was born on 3 January 1845 in Swolna, partitioned Lithuania, then Vitebsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Belarus). At the age of 18 as a high-school student in Vilna (at the Instytut Szlachecki (Noble Institution)) he took part in the January Uprising (1863); taken prisoner on 28 April 1863, he was stripped of his noble status, his lands were repossessed by another family member loyal to the Russian government, and Czerski was finally forcibly conscripted into the Russian Army and exiled to Siberia (to Blagoveshchensk near Amur River) by the Russian authorities. He never made it to Blagoveshchensk, and was detached to serve in the formation near Omsk. During that time he was taken in by some other Poles (Marczewski, Kwiatkowski) living in exile in Omsk region, as well as Russian geographer, Grigory Nikolayevich Potanin. With their help he became interested in the natural history of the region. They provided him with literature on Siberia and natural sciences, and during his free time he self-educated himself and carried out his first research.
After release from army in 1869 he did not receive permission to return home, becoming a political exilee; he was refused the right to enter a university; his publications were rejected and his first attempt to enter the Russian Geographical Society was rejected. For the next two years he was forced to work as a teacher in Omsk, as he was denied the right to leave the area.
In 1871 he received a permission to move to Irkutsk; there he meet other Polish exiles turned scholars, Aleksander Czekanowski and Benedykt Dybowski. With their help (Czekanowski is considered his mentor) he entered the Russian Geographical Society, got a job at a local museum and took part in several expedition, gaining experience and renown. He took part in the expeditions to Sayan Mountains, Irkut River Valley and Lower Tunguska River. During four expeditions (1877–1881) Czerski has explored the valley of the Selenga river and he published a study concerning Baikal, explaining the origin of the lake and presenting the geological structure of East Siberia. Perhaps the most notable of these expeditions was the study of the geological structure of the coast of the Lake Baikal. The result of this work was the first geological map of that coast, a map for which Czerski was decorated with the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences (he received three total during his career [1]) and for has received an international award in Bologna, Italy. In his later work Czerski has put forward the idea of development of a relief (1878) and offered one of the first analysis of tectonics of internal Asia (1886) and pioneered the geomorphological evolution theory.
In 1878 he married Marfa Pavlovna Ivanova, a native of Siberia region. In 1883 he was pardoned by the Russian government, and later he regained his noble status. He lived in Irkutsk until 1886, working in the east-Siberian department of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1886 he fell ill (progressing tuberculosis and even partial paralysis) and was allowed to move to Saint Peterburg, where he joined the Peterburg's Science Academy; nonetheless he took time during his travel from Irkutsk to Peterburg to carefully document the geological side of the route. During that period he was appointed head of an expedition exploring the Yana, Indigirka and Kolyma basins. He collected and cataloged over 2,500 of ancient bones, publishing in 1888 a large work on Quaternary Period mammals followed by an even larger work on the Siberian mammals relics in 1891.
He died in 25 June 1892 during an expedition to Kolyma, Yana and Indigirka Rivers. He was buried near the Omolon River.
His name was given to several landmarks in Siberia, including the Chersky Mountain Range and the settlement of Chersky in the Sakha Republic, another mountain range similarly named in Chita Oblast, the Chersky Mountain - highest peak (2572 m) of the Baikal Range, Chersky Peak (2090 m) - one of the highest peaks of the Chamar-Daban Range, Chersky Pass in the same mountains, Chersky Stone (728 m) - a peak in near Listvyanka, Chersky Valley and Chersky Plateau in the Sayan Mountains, a waterfall near the Baikal Lake, an inactive volcano in the Tunkinsk Valley, and Chersky Place - an archeological site near Irkutsk where ancient human remains were discovered. Three species were named after him: Osteolepis Tscherskii (fish), Leperditia Czerskii (crustacean) and Polyptchites Tscherskii (ammonite).
The Irkutsk-based Jan Czerski Belarusian Culture Society, an organization of the Belarusian minority in Russia is named after Jan Czerski.
A street in Vilnius, Lithuania, is named after Jan Czerski.
Full list of Czerki's works contains 97 positions; over a hundred works have been published dedicated to him.
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