Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kots (German form Alexander Erich Kohts; ; 19 April 1880 – 7 September 1964) was a Soviet and Russian

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

and founding director of the

State Darwin Museum The State Darwin Museum () is a natural history museum in Moscow. The museum was founded in 1907 by Alexander Kohts (1880–1964) and was the world's first museum of evolution explaining the work of Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ...

in Moscow. His wife was the animal behaviourist

Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts Nadezhda Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kohts (Надежда Николаевна Ладыгина-Котс; – ) was a Russian zoopsychologist and comparative psychologist best known for her work comparing human and chimpanzee behavior, emotion, and cog ...

Biography

Kots was born in

Borisoglebsk Borisoglebsk () is a town in Voronezh Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Vorona River near its confluence with the Khopyor. Population: 65,000 (1969). History Borisoglebsk was founded in 1646 and was named for the Russian s ...

, Tambov to Berlin-born linguist and botanist Alfred Kots and Evgenia (Johanna) Alexandrovna née Grassman. He began to collect natural history specimens at a young age and was educated at the Moscow classical gymnasium. He learned to stuff and prepare animal specimens from F. Yuri Felman and received a gold medal for his taxidermy in 1896. With references from Theodore K. Lorenz and

Mikhail Menzbier Mikhail Aleksandrovich Menzbier (Russian: Михаил Александрович Мензбир; 23 October 1855 – 10 October 1935) was a Russian and Soviet ornithologist. He was a professor of comparative anatomy at the Moscow University and ...

he went on a scientific expedition to Western Siberia in 1899 and collected a large number of specimens for which he received a silver medal from the Russian Society for Acclimatization of Animals and Plants. He joined Moscow University in 1901 and between his studies he made a trip to European museum and graduated in 1906. He then worked with Mikhail Menzbir. In 1907 he began to teach evolution to women at Moscow university at the invitation of

Petr Sushkin Petr Petrovich Sushkin (; 27 January 1868 – 17 September 1928) was a Russian and Soviet based ornithologist who specialised on comparative anatomy, and evolution of birds, particularly of the birds of prey. Sushkin was born in Tula, Russia, in ...

and

Nikolai Koltsov Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (; 14 July 1872 – 2 December 1940) was a Russian biologist and a pioneer of modern genetics. Among his students were Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky, Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson, Alexander Sergeevich Serebrovsky, A ...

. In 1909 the collections of Theodore K. Lorenz were passed on to him and he then began to establish a small museum which became the Darwin Museum in 1922. He married Nadezhda Nikolayevna Ladygina, one of his students, in 1911 and they had a son who they named as Rudolf after

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century ...

who greatly influenced them. Kots taught at the Moscow University, the Military Pedagogical Academy, gave numerous popular lectures, was a director of

Moscow Zoo The Moscow Zoo or Moskovsky Zoopark () is a zoo, the largest in Russia. History The Moscow Zoo was founded in 1864 by professor-biologists, K.F. Rulje, S.A. Usov and A.P. Bogdanov, from the Moscow State University. In 1919, the zoo was natio ...

, and the Darwin Museum. After his death there was a plan to dissolve the museum but it was saved by V. N. Ignatijeva.

References

External links

Moscow University biography
(in Russian)
Biographical film by Aleksandr's son Rudolf Kots (in Russian with English subtitles)

Farewell speech by Aleksandr
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kots, Aleksandr 1880 births 1964 deaths People from Borisoglebsk Academic staff of Moscow State University Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Russian naturalists 19th-century zoologists from the Russian Empire 20th-century Russian zoologists Soviet zoologists