Karl Fedorovich Kessler (; – ) was a Baltic German

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 ...

who worked as a professor of biology at

Saint Petersburg Imperial University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public university, public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the uni ...

. Among his contributions was the idea that evolution at an infraspecific level involved mutual aid and that Charles Darwin had placed too much emphasis on competition which he accepted as occurring at the interspecies level.

Life and work

Kessler was born in Damrau, Konigsberg, where his father was a royal forester (''oberforestmeister''). His father moved to

Novgorod Governorate Novgorod Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR, which existed from 1727 to 1776 and from 1796 to 1927. Its administrative cent ...

, where Kessler grew up. In 1828, he joined the with a scholarship and went to

in 1834. He attended the zoology lectures of Stepan Kutorga. After graduation he worked as a school mathematics teacher. In 1837, Kessler and his botanist friend from student days, went on an expedition to Finland. In 1840, he defended a master's dissertation on the legs of birds in relation to systematics. In 1842, his doctoral dissertation was on the skeleton of woodpeckers in relation to their classification. He then obtained a zoology chair at the University of Kiev, a position vacated by

Alexander von Middendorff Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (; 18 August 1815 – 24 January 1894) was a Russian zoologist and explorer of Baltic German and Estonian extraction. He was known for his expedition in 1843–45 to the extreme north and east of Siberia, des ...

, who went to Siberia on an expedition. Kessler collected and examined numerous taxa across the region. He conducted most of his studies of birds in Ukrainian regions of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

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 ...

, Volhynia Governorate,

Kherson Governorate Kherson Governorate, known until 1803 as Nikolayev Governorate, was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Kherson. It encompassed in area and had a population of 2,733,612 inhabitants. At t ...

Poltava Governorate Poltava Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire. It was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Little Russia Governorate (1796–1802), Little Russia Governorate and had its capital in Polt ...

and

Bessarabia Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...

. He also studied the fish of the

Dniester The Dniester ( ) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and then through Moldova (from which it more or less separates the breakaway territory of Transnistria), finally discharging into the Black Sea on Uk ...

Dnieper The Dnieper or Dnepr ( ), also called Dnipro ( ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately long, with ...

, and

Southern Bug The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh (; ; ; or just ), and sometimes Boh River (; ),

rivers, and on the Ukrainian coast of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

. Based on the fish fauna, he hypothesized that several of the lakes in the region were earlier connected. He suggested that the Black and Caspian Seas had separated early and that the Black Sea and the Mediterranean had been connected by streams. Thus he was among the early zoogeographers. In 1862, he replaced Stepan Kutorga at Saint Petersburg Imperial University. Here he established a zoology department. A year after the first congress of Russian naturalists and doctors, he founded the in 1868, and in an address to the society in 1879 he proposed that

mutual aid Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome social, economic, and political barriers to meeting common needs. This ...

, rather than mutual struggle, was the main factor in the

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

of a species. The anarchist

Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended the Page Corps and later s ...

later developed this theory in his book '' Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution''.

Eponymy

Numerous species have been named after Kessler including Kessler's gudgeon ''(Romanogobio kesslerii), Ponticola kessleri, Barbus kessleri,'' and '' Turdus kessleri''.

References

External links

Руководство для определения птиц, которые водятся или встречаются в Европейской России
(1847) * 1815 births 1881 deaths 19th-century zoologists from the Russian Empire Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Evolutionary biologists People from the Russian Empire of German descent Rectors of Saint Petersburg State University Ichthyologists from the Russian Empire Ornithologists from the Russian Empire Privy Councillor (Russian Empire) {{Russia-scientist-stub

Life and work

Eponymy

See also

References

External links