Contributions to the Biography of F. D. Pleske (1858-1932)

摘要

The activity of the Extraordinary Academician and Director of the Zoological museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences from 1893 to 1896, Fedor Dmitrievich Pleske (23 .VII. 185 8-1 .VIII. 1932), ornithologist and dipterist, is one of the little studied pages in the history of the Academy of Sciences and its Zoological Museum. During Pleske's directorship considerable changes took place, which resulted in the Zoological Museum becoming the world center of taxonomic studies. Pleske played an importantrole in this process. Changing of the dominant scientific trends of that time generated collisions between classical taxonomists and representatives of new schools in zoology. One of the episodes of this controversy was Pleske's retirement from the Academy of Sciences in 1896 in which the famous embryologist academician A.O. Kovalevsky played a considerable part. Pleske returned to the Museum in 1918. The second part of his scientific activity at the Museum was mainly devoted to dipterology. Though I have no reason to affirm that he was repressed in the period of Stalin's "radical turn," yet the biography of F.D. Pleske remained unwritten, as well as those of many other zoologists who perished during repressions in the 1930s.