2 24 Alexander Petrunkevitch, Ph.D., 



psedogenesis in insects, who received two prizes for his zoological 

 investigations, one of them from the Paris Academy, and who 

 achieved no lesser fame and endeared himself to all Russian 

 children by his incomparable "Tales of the Purring Puss" ? not 

 to mention his less known novel in two volumes printed in 1890 

 and entitled "The Dark Path." How about the writer and critic 

 Danilewsky who published in 1885 two volumes on "Darwinism" 

 in which he collected all evidence that could be brought against 

 Darwin's theories? How about Ilya Ilyitch ]\Ietchnikoff who 

 first achieved fame as zoologist, changing later to bacteriology 

 and the study of immunity and occupying an assistant director- 

 ship in the Institut Pasteur in Paris where he died quite recently ? 



Yet the beginning of scientific study and research as we have 

 seen was made by foreigners whom Peter the Great marked out 

 for the work and Catherine the First called to occupy the first 

 chairs in the Imperial Academy while Catherine the Second fol- 

 lowed their example. Some of them became in time loyal 

 Russians, others at least enjoyed Russian hospitality and condi- 

 tions which were evidently more favorable to work than profes- 

 sorial positions in their own countries. To that extent at least 

 the great Swiss mathematician Euler; the great embryologist 

 Karl Ernst Baer, known in Russia where he was born of German 

 parents and where he spent almost all his life as Karl IMaximo- 

 vitch; the German anatomist and physiologist, the creator of the 

 Theory of Epigenesis, Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, born in Berlin 

 in 1733 and called to Russia by Catherine the Second in 1766 and 

 resident in Russia until his death in St. Petersburg in 1794, have 

 contributed to Russia's share in science and to avoid mentioning 

 them would be as unfair to their memory as to avoid the name 

 of Louis Agassiz in speaking of America's contribution to science. 

 They were favored, they were happy in their work in Russia. 

 They became identified with the Imperial Academy, they printed 

 their papers in the Memoirs of that institution which they and 

 others after them made great. 



It is not my purpose to present in this short sketch of Russia's 

 contribution to science an outline of work in all branches of 

 natural sciences. Nor do I intend to give a list of all men and 

 women who contributed to the world's treasury of knowledge, 

 still less to give a list of books and papers written by Russian 

 scientists. Such a list would fill several stately volumes. All I 



