HiN 11 | A. Zemtsov

Alexander von Humboldt’s ideas
on volcanism and their influence on Russian scientists

General notes should be made of two great Russian scientists who were among the first to read Humboldt’s works and contemplate his ideas:

In 1853, Semenov studied at the Berlin University; among his teachers were Gustav Rose (1798-1873, elected as member of the St.-Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1830) and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876, foreign member (1829), honorary member (1840) of the St.-Petersburg Academy of Sciences). In Berlin Semenov was personally introduced to Humboldt.[1] According to Semenov’s memoirs, Humboldt asked him to bring him samples of the Tien-Shan volcanic rocks (Semenov-Tien-Shanskiy, 1917, p. 257).

In 1854, Semenov traveled to Italy and studied the Vesuvius eruption of 1854-1855. Back in Russia, he organized a special expedition to the northern Tien-Shan in 1856-1857. He did not find any evidence of volcanic activity in this mountain range. The results of his study were published in 1856, 1859, and 1868 in the Proceedings of the Russian Geographical Society. P. Semenov came to the conclusion that Humboldt was wrong in his volcanic reconstructions. Semenov was also sure that volcanic activity depended on proximity to the sea shore, and that no volcanoes could be located deep within the continent.

P. Semenov was a prominent scientist in various fields of knowledge. In 1897, as Head of the Department of Statistics, he organized the first Russian Census. The results of this Census were used by F. Auerbach (Vienna) in his famous article of 1913 dealing with the statistics of populations in cities (later named Zipf law) (Auerbach, 1913).

The Russian Prince Petr Kropotkin read “Kosmos” thoroughly (in German?) before he went to serve as an officer in Siberia in 1862. In his “Memoirs of a revolutionist”[2] he remarked that a school education should be based on the philosophy of natural sciences as explained in the first parts of “Kosmos” (Kropotkin, 1998, p. 117). In the first stage of his research, Kropotkin believed in A.v. Humboldt’s idea of a regular system of mountain ranges in Asia, following the meridians and paralleles (Kropotkin, 1988, p. 225).

In 1864, Kropotkin discovered extinct volcanoes in northeastern Manchuria, and during his next expedition (1865) he discovered fresh volcanic cones near Lake Baikal. At the same time (1865-1866) he participated in tests of the first Russian seismometer (Irkutsk, at Baikal). On April 4, 1874, Prince Kropotkin was arrested for active participation in an illegal organization. Later, Kropotkin became involved in international revolutionary activity as a leading anarchist (Zemtsov, 2003; Zemtzov, Markin, 2005).

The discovery of fresh volcanic forms in the Baikal rift zone in 1860s is one of the most important discoveries in the history of Russian geology and geography in the 19th century and corresponds completely to Humboldt’s ideas of volcanism existing in Central Asia (Zemtsov, 2005).[3]

[1] A.v.Humboldt was elected an honorary member of the St.Petersburg Ac.of Sci. on February 11, 1818.

[2] First published in 1899 in Boston (USA), first Russian edition, 1902 (London).

[3] To be precise it should be noted that in later years the presence of young volcanic rocks in the Kuen-Lun ridge was acknowledged by the editors of the Russian translation of Humboldt’s “Central Asia” (1915). The several volcanic areas in Central Asia have been described by a leading Russian volcanologist (Lutschitskiy, 1971; pp. 67-75). For the Tibet plateau the presence of young volcanic cones and thermal springs is acknowledged in the Soviet Encyclopedia (v. 25 (1976)).