Friedrich Benjamin von Lütke: Difference between revisions

Count Fyodor Petrovich Litke (Russian: Граф Фёдор Петро́вич Ли́тке) ({28 September  [O.S. 17 September] 1797 - 28 August [O.S. 17 August] 1882) was a Russian navigator, geographer, and Arctic explorer. He became a count in 1866, and an admiral in 1855. He was a Corresponding Member (1829), Honorable Member (1855), and President (1864) of the Russian Academy of Science in St.Petersburg. He was also an Honorable Member of many other Russian and foreign scientific establishments, and a Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Science in Paris.

Litke started his naval career in 1813. He took part in Vasily Golovnin's world cruise on the ship "Kamchatka" from 1817 to 1819. Litke led the expedition to explore the coastline of Novaya Zemlya, the White Sea, and the eastern parts of the Barents Sea from 1821 to 1824. From 1826 to 1829, he headed the world cruise on the ship "Senyavin", during which he described the western coastline of the Bering Sea, Pribilof Islands, Bonin Islands, and Caroline Islands (discovering 12 new islands). Litke was the first one to come up with the idea of a recording tide measurer (1839). They were built and installed along the coastlines of the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean in 1841. Litke was one of the organizers of the Russian Geographic Society and its president in 1845-1850 and 1857-1872. He was appointed Chairman of the Naval Scientific Committee in 1846. Litke was a commander-in-chief and a military governor of the ports of Reval (today's Tallinn) and later Kronstadt in 1850-1857. In 1855, Litke became a member of the Russian State Council (Государственный совет in Russian; a legislative entity along with the Duma).

In 1873, Russian Geographical Society introduced the Litke gold medal. They named a cape, a peninsula, a mountain and a bay in Novaya Zemlya after Litke, as well as a group of islands of the Franz Josef Land, Baydaratskaya Bay, and Nordenskiöld Archipelago. A strait between Kamchatka and Karaginsky Island also bears his name.