Dmitry Nikolaevich
Anuchin
1843-1923
Dmitry Nikolaevich Anuchin was a Russian anthropologist, ethnographer, archaeologist, geographer, Academician (1896), honorary member (1898) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Dmitri Nikolaevich was born in St Petersburg on September 8, 1843. In 1863 he entered Moscow University at the Department of Natural Sciences of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, from which he graduated in 1867. As a student, Dmitri Nikolaevich was interested in zoology, anthropology, ethnography, and studied literature on these subjects. After defending his master’s thesis in 1880 on “On some anomalies of the human skull, mainly in their distribution among races”, D.N. Anuchin was elected associate professor at the Anthropology Department of Moscow University. For his scientific works published in 1886-1889, D.N. Anuchin received the academic title of Doctor of Geography. From 1875 he was a member of the Imperial Society of Amateurs of Natural History, Anthropology and Ethnography, of which he was President from 1890 to 1923 and in which he organised the geographical department. In 1894-1895, D.N. Anuchin was the President of the Society of Amateurs of Natural History, Anthropology and Ethnography, where he organised the geographical section. D.N. Anuchin took part in an expedition to find out the causes of river silting in the Tver governorate, and he was credited with solving the question of the source of the Volga. The scientist wrote about 600 scientific works on geomorphology, hydrology, geography, ethnic anthropology and anthropogenesis, ethnography and primitive archeology; studies on the history of geography. He developed university courses. He edited the journal “Ethnographic Review” (from 1889), founded the journals “Zemlevedenie” (1894) and “Russian Anthropological Journal” (1900). At Moscow University D.N. Anuchin created the Geographical Museum, one of the most complete in Russia, with a library of about 10,000 volumes, and the Anthropological Museum, the largest museum of anthropology and ethnology. In addition, the scientist donated his personal library of some 2,000 publications to Moscow State University. For his services to the field of geography, the Imperial Russian Geographical Society elected Anuchin an honorary member in 1901, and in 1913 awarded him the Konstantinovsky Medal ‘for the totality of his long-standing research in geography’. A glacier on the northern island of Novaya Zemlya, a mountain in the northern Urals, an island and a strait in the Little Kuril Ridge are named in Anuchin’s honour. In Moscow there is a commemorative plaque on the house where D.N. Anuchin lived.
Address: Moscow, Khlebny lane, 6
