Pallas, Peter Simon , 1741–1811, German naturalist and explorer. He became (1768) professor at the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. In 1769, Pallas was a member of an expedition to observe the transit of Venus, and until 1774 he explored the upper Amur, the Caspian Sea, and the Ural and Altai mts., collecting valuable specimens in natural history. Pallas published (1771–76) an account of the journey and also wrote on natural history and on Bering's discoveries.

Peter Simon Pallas: född 1741 i Berlin, Tyskland, medicine doktor 1759 i Leiden, arbetade i Holland och England 1761-1766, i Ryssland 1767, medlem av Ryska vetenskapsakademien, reste 1768-74 i Uralbergen och västra Sibirien, arbetade 1774-93 i St. Petersburg, reste 1793-94 i södra Ryssland och Krim, bodde 1795-1810 på Krim, återvände till Berlin 1810 och dog där 1811.

Pallas, Peter Simon

* 22. September 1741 Berlin

+ 8. September 1811 Berlin

Mediziner, Forschungsreisender

Ehrengrab:

Jerusalems- und Neue Kirchengemeinde Kirchhof I, Kreuzberg, Blücherstraße/Zossener Straße

Straße:

Pallasstraße, Schöneberg

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

Pallas, Peter Simon

b. , Sept. 22, 1741, Berlin
d. Sept. 8, 1811, Berlin

German naturalist who advanced a theory of mountain formation and, by the age of 15, had outlined new classifications of certain animal groups.

In 1761 he went to England to study natural-history collections and to make geological observations. He was appointed professor of natural history at the Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, in 1768. About the same time he joined a scientific expedition to Russia and Siberia. For the next six years he traveled across the length and breadth of the vast empire. He found a wide distribution of mammoth and rhinoceros fossils, including some with their hairy hides preserved, in the Siberian ice. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1774 with a great amount of data and many fossil specimens, but he had ruined his health. He published his major findings from the expedition in three volumes, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs (1771-76; "Journey Through Various Provinces of the Russian Empire"). His chief geological contribution, based largely on his study of the Ural and Altai mountain ranges of Siberia, was the recognition of a temporal sequence of rocks from the centre to the flanks of a range.