Following the Route of Gerhard Friedrich Mueller

The project for the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733-1743) was developed by the St. Petersburg Academy jointly with the Senate and the Admiralty Collegium. The expedition became one of the most ambitious undertakings in the history of field explorations. It is not by chance that the expedition was referred to as the Great Northern Expedition.

A great number of land and marine detachments numbering hundreds of people conducted a complex exploration of the whole territory of Siberia from the Urals to the Pacific, and from the southern steppes to the coast of the Arctic Ocean, sailed to the shores of North America, Japan, Aleutian and other islands of the Pacific, which resulted in great geographical discoveries. A lot of studies have been devoted to the history of the expedition as well as to some of its participants. Yet, its enormous academic heritage has not been studied fully yet. In the first place, this concerns the manuscripts and other materials of G. F. Mueller, a Russian academician of German origin, whose tercentenary was widely celebrated by the academic community in 2005.

Magazine SCIENCE First Hand has repeatedly turned to the subject of the greatest Russian academic project in its publications on the life and academic activity of the participants of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, such as G. F. Mueller, I. G. Gmelin, and G. W. Steller. In the series of materials devoted to Mueller's anniversary, some fragments of its fundamental manuscript A Description of Siberian Peoples were published for the first time.

Mueller was the first to set the task of conducting a complex study of the ethnic history, languages, material and spiritual culture of the aboriginal peoples of Siberia during his voyage as a participant of the Second Kamchatka expedition. Only Mueller's descendants were able to appreciate the true significance of the really grandiose results of his activities as an ethnographer.

More information on these and other subjects you can find in the printed version of our journal.