Gregor von Helmersen

Who was Gregor von Helmersen?

Gregor von Helmersen was a Baltic German geologist.

He received an engineering training and became major-general in the corps of Mining Engineers. In 1837 he was appointed professor of geology in the mining institute at Saint Petersburg of which he was also director.

In 1839, along with Karl Ernst von Baer, he founded the first serial natural scientific publication in Russia known as Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches.

In 1850, he became an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. He founded and became the first head of the Russian Geological Committee in 1882.

He was an author of numerous memoirs on the geology of Russia, especially on coal and other mineral deposits of the country; and he wrote also some explanations to accompany separate sheets of the geological map of Russia.

His geological work was continued to an advanced age, one of the later publications being Studien über die Wanderblöcke und die Diluvialgebilde Russlands. Most of his memoirs were published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Saint Petersburg.