Aleksey Tillo (; Alexei Andreyevitch Tillo) (25 November ( O.S. November 13), 1839,

Kiev Governorate Kiev Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire (1796–1917), Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–18; 1918–1921), Ukrainian State (1918), and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919–19 ...

– 11 January ( O.S. December 30), 1900,

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

) was a Russian geographer, cartographer, land surveyor,

lieutenant general Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was norma ...

of the

Russian Imperial Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

(1894). Aleksey Tillo's grandfather was a French

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

, but his father was a citizen of the Russian Empire.

Career

Aleksey graduated from the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy (1862) and Department of

Geodesy Geodesy or geodetics is the science of measuring and representing the Figure of the Earth, geometry, Gravity of Earth, gravity, and Earth's rotation, spatial orientation of the Earth in Relative change, temporally varying Three-dimensional spac ...

of the General Staff Academy in Saint Petersburg (1866). His greatest achievement was a hypsometric map of the European part of Russia published in 1889. It was the first map of its kind that showed elevation correctly.Гипсометрическая карта Европейской России
/ Сост. по данным Тилло, Седерхольма и Шокальского // Большой всемирный настольный Атлас Маркса / Под редакцией Eduard Petri и Ю.М. Шокальского. СПб.: Adolf Marks, 1910. For creating this map Tillo was elected a corresponding member of the Russian (1892) and Parisian Academies of Sciences. Aleksey Tillo is known to have coined the term Central Russian Upland. Also, he measured the length of the main Russian rivers and conducted work on level difference between the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

and the

Aral Sea The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan to its north and Uzbekistan to its south, which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up into desert by the 2010s. It was in the Aktobe and Kyzylorda regions of Kazakhst ...

. Aleksey Tillo also authored a number of works on geomagnetism and

meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...

. Part of the work he had initiated was continued after his death by Yuly Shokalsky (1856–1940).

Honours

The Tillo Islands, a small archipelago in the

Kara Sea The Kara Sea is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Ultimately the Kara, Barents and Laptev Seas are all ...

, as well as Tillo Island (Franz Josef Land) near Wilczek Land in

Franz Josef Land Franz Josef Land () is a Russian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It is inhabited only by military personnel. It constitutes the northernmost part of Arkhangelsk Oblast and consists of 192 islands, which cover an area of , stretching from east ...

, were named after Aleksey Tillo.

Medals

* Order of St. Stanislaus 2nd class (1869) * Order of St. Anna 2nd class (1873) * Imperial Order of Saint Vladimir 4th class (1876) *Imperial Order of Saint Vladimir 3rd class (1879) *Order of St. Stanislaus 1st class (1885) *Order of St. Anna 1st class (1888) *Imperial Order of Saint Vladimir 2nd class (1891) * Order of the White Eagle (1896)

References

1839 births 1900 deaths 19th-century explorers from the Russian Empire Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Imperial Russian Army generals Nobility from the Russian Empire Geographers from the Russian Empire {{Russia-bio-stub