Fyodor Petrovich Litke

Count Fyodor Petrovich Litke ( _ru. Граф Фёдор Петро́вич Ли́тке) ({OldStyleDate|28 September |1797|17 September - OldStyleDate|28 August|1882|17 August) 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.

Count Fyodor (or Fedor) P. Litke came from a family of Russianized Germans. Count Litke’s grandfather was Johann F. Litke, a German Lutheran preacher and writer on physical science and theology. In 1745, Johann Litke went from Germany to Moscow as pastor of a Lutheran parish in order to spread Protestantism to Russia. As a youth, Fydor attended a Lutheran school and learned German, the language of his ancestors. He remained a practicing Lutheran. A book, in English, about Fyodor P. Litke, published in 1996 by The University of Alaska, entitled "Fedor Petrovich Litke" by A.I. Alekscev, ISBN 0-912006-86-2, is a 262-page biography of this 19th Century Russian scientist. This book was originally published in Russian in Moscow in 1970.

Litke started his naval career in the Imperial Russian Navy in 1813. He took part in Vasily Golovnin's world cruise on the ship "Kamchatka" from 1817 to 1819. Then from 1821 to 1824, Litke led the expedition to explore the coastline of Novaya Zemlya, the White Sea, and the eastern parts of the Barents Sea. From 1826 to 1829, he headed the world cruise on the ship "Senyavin", sailing from Cronstadt and rounding Cape Horn. He was accompanied in his venture by Capt. Mikhail Nikolaievich Staniukovich who was in command of the sloop "Moller".During this voyage he described the western coastline of the Bering Sea, the Bonin Islands off Japan, and the Carolines, discovering 12 new islands.

In 1835 Fyodor Litke was appointed by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia as tutor of his second son, Grand Duke Constantine Nicholaievich of Russia.

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, as well as a Russian icebreaker also were named after him.

Litke's contribution to the geography of Alaska

During his voyage round the world on the Russian corvette "Seniavine" Litke arrived at Sitka in 1827. From there he sailed to Unalaska, surveying the Pribilof Islands, St. Matthew Island and the Commander Islands, before arriving to Petropavlovsk, a harbor which he used as a base for further surveys along the Siberian coast all the way to St. Lawrence Bay by the Bering Strait.

After finally returning to Cronstadt Litke published an 8-volume account of his explorations with maps in Russian and in French. Very few copies were published and its nautical part became an extremely rare item. The nautical volume contains hydrographic and geographic details on the then little-known Bering Sea and Alaska obtained not only from Litke's own work but also from various previously unpublished Russian sources. Even though there were errors and delays in the publication that didn't satisfy the author, Litke's work is a valuable source of information on the evolution of geographic knowledge of Alaska and the Bering Sea. When W. H. Dall published an index for the book in its English edition; Litke's name was misspelt as "Lutke", an error which has stuck in many American geographic reference works. [ [http://explorenorth.com/library/history/geodic-ak-1902-L.html The Naming of Alaska - Explorers 'L' - ExploreNorth ] ]

Certain geographic features of the Alaskan coast, like the Walrus and Kritskoi Islands, Kudobin Islands and numerous other features in the Aleutians, were named by Count Feodor Litke in the maps that were subsequently published.The landhead now named Cape Lutke in Alaska was named after this Russian explorer by the Imperial Russian Hydrographic Service in 1847, but the misspelling of Litke's name as "Lutke" endures in the United States. [ [http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=108:3:15845223094965297813::NO::P3_FID:1418347 Naming of features] ]

References

* [http://www.jstor.org/pss/1800699 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography]