Citizenship Russian Education University of Tartu Name Alexander Bunge | Nationality Russian German Fields Botany | |
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Died July 18, 1890, Tartu, Estonia Children Gustav von Bunge, Alexander von Bunge | ||
Institutions University of Dorpat | ||
Alexander Georg von Bunge (Russian: Aleksandr Andreevich von Bunge, Алекса́ндр Андре́евич Бу́нге; 6 October [O.S. 24 September] 1803 – 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1890) was a Russian German botanist. He is best remembered for scientific expeditions into Asia and especially Siberia.
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Biography
Bunge was born as son of a family that belonged to the German minority in Tsarist Russia. His father Andreas Theodor was the son of Georg Friedrich Bunge, a pharmacist who had emigrated from East Prussia to Russia in the 18th century. He studied medicine at the University of Dorpat, later serving as a professor of botany in Kazan. In 1835, he returned to Dorpat, where he taught classes in botany until 1867. Here, he kept in contact with Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal, a botanist at the University of Halle, through correspondence, via articles published in the journal "Linnaea" and through the exchange of herbarium specimens. He remained in Dorpat until 1881, spending his later years there conducting investigations of Estonian flora.
In 1826 with Carl Friedrich von Ledebour and Carl Anton von Meyer, he embarked on an important scientific expedition to the Kirghiz Steppe and Altai Mountains. In 1830-31, he traveled to Beijing by way of Siberia, through which he conducted extensive research of Mongolian flora. Following his investigations in China, he returned to the Altai Mountains, where he conducted studies of the eastern part of the region (1832). In 1857-58 he took part in a scientific expedition to Khorasan and Afghanistan.
He was the father of physiologist Gustav von Bunge (1844-1920) and of Alexander von Bunge (1851–1930), an explorer and zoologist. His older brother, Friedrich Georg von Bunge (1802-1897), was a legal historian.
Commemoration
Bunge Land in the New Siberian Islands and a crater on Mars were named after him.