Maria Pronchishcheva (; before 1713 – ), also known as Tatiana Fyodorovna Pronchishcheva (), was a Russian explorer. She is considered the first female polar explorer.

Life

Tatiana Kondyreva was born in Beryozovo near Aleksin in the family of Fyodor Stepanovich Kondyrev. In 1721, her family moved to Kronstadt, where Tatiana met Vasili Pronchishchev. They married in May 1733. Soon Tatiana joined her husband in the Great Northern Expedition. In 1735, Pronchishcheva and her husband Vasili Pronchishchev went down the

Lena River The Lena is a river in the Russian Far East and is the easternmost river of the three great rivers of Siberia which flow into the Arctic Ocean, the others being Ob (river), Ob and Yenisey. The Lena River is long and has a capacious drainage basi ...

from

Yakutsk Yakutsk ( ) is the capital and largest city of Sakha, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of Russia's most rapidly growing regional cities, with a population of 355,443 at the ...

on Vasili's sloop ''Yakutsk'', doubled its delta, and stopped for wintering at the mouth of the Olenyok River. Many members of the crew fell ill and died, mainly owing to

scurvy Scurvy is a deficiency disease (state of malnutrition) resulting from a lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Early symptoms of deficiency include weakness, fatigue, and sore arms and legs. Without treatment, anemia, decreased red blood cells, gum d ...

. Despite the difficulties, in 1736, they reached the eastern shore of the Taymyr Peninsula and went north along its coastline. However, Pronchishcheva and her husband succumbed to scurvy and died on the way back.Historical data
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Name

Pronchishcheva is not mentioned in either her husband's reports or the ones of Chelyuskin, Bering or Chirikov. Even the record of her death in the logbook of ''Yakutsk'' does not contain her first name. In 1913, the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition named the cape at the entrance to one of the nameless bays on the Taymyr coast in her honor. It was marked on maps as "m. Pronchishchevoy" (where "m." stands for ''mys'', Russian for cape, and "-oy" ending denotes

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

). When preparing the map for publication, it was perceived as belonging to the bay and transformed into “ M. Pronchishcheva Bay”. The letter M was decoded into "Maria". Her real name, Tatiana, was revealed in 1983 research by V.V. Bogdanov.

References

1710s births Year of birth uncertain 1736 deaths People from Tula Oblast Explorers of the Arctic Explorers of Asia Explorers of Siberia Laptev Sea Female polar explorers Great Northern Expedition 18th-century women from the Russian Empire 18th-century explorers from the Russian Empire Deaths from scurvy Polar explorers from the Russian Empire {{Explorer-stub