Georg W. Steller

Georg W. Steller (born March 10, 1709, Windsheim, Bavaria [Germany]—died Nov. 14, 1746, Tyumen, Russia) was a German-born zoologist and botanist who served as a naturalist aboard the ship St. Peter during the years 1741–42, as part of the Great Northern Expedition, which aimed to map a northern sea route from Russia to North America. During that expedition, while stranded on what is today called Bering Island, Steller sighted a number of animals not previously known to science. Included among them was a large aquatic mammal, now known as Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), which was hunted to extinction within a few decades following Steller’s report.

Steller’s early education took place in the Bavarian town of Windsheim, where he was born. Between 1729 and 1734 he attended several universities, including the University of Wittenberg and the University of Halle (now combined in the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg). His studies focused on theology, medicine, and the natural sciences, including botany. In 1734 he traveled to Berlin, where he earned his certification in botany and joined the Russian army, serving as a surgeon. In the winter of 1734, after arriving in St. Petersburg, Steller left the army and took a post as physician for the archbishop of Novgorod, Feofan Prokopovich.

While in St. Petersburg, Steller also met German naturalist and explorer Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, who was one of the first naturalists to maintain journals of his travels and observations. Steller admired Messerschmidt’s work and heard about a possible Russian expedition to the Arctic seas in the Far East. In 1737, two years after Messerschmidt’s death, Steller married his widow Brigitta Messerschmidt. That same year Steller was given an appointment in natural history with the Imperial Academy of Sciences and was accepted for the Great Northern Expedition. He departed for Kamchatka Peninsula, located in Far Eastern Russia, in January the following year.

In March 1741 Steller met Danish navigator and explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering, captain of the ship St. Peter, one of the two vessels assigned to the expedition (the other ship was the St. Paul). That June the St. Peter and St. Paul set sail for North America. The ships were later separated by a storm, and, while the crew of the St. Paul went on to discover several Aleutian Islands, the crew of the St. Peter sighted a mountain range on mainland Alaska. In late summer 1741 the St. Peter was anchored off the coast of an island in the Gulf of Alaska (presumably Kayak Island), and Steller ventured ashore, becoming one of the first Europeans to step foot on Alaskan soil. In early November, with Bering and many crew members suffering from scurvy and with sailing conditions growing treacherous, they dropped anchor near the shores of a desolate Aleutian island (now known as Bering Island), where they would pass the winter. Strong winds later wrecked the anchored ship, and Bering died from his illness. Steller and his shipmates eventually constructed a small boat from the wreckage of the St. Peter and left the island, returning safely to Kamchatka in 1742. Four years later Steller died in Tyumen, Siberia, on his return overland journey to St. Petersburg.

Despite the difficulties of the expedition, Steller managed to bring back to Kamchatka a small collection of specimens from the islands he visited, among which was the palate bone of a sea cow and several different species of birds, including a species of jay that was later named Steller’s jay (Cyanocitta stelleri). He recorded his observations of the fauna on and around the islands in The Beasts of the Sea (De Bestiis Marinis), which was published in 1751. In that work, Steller detailed the dissection by himself and his crewmates of a female sea cow on the shore of Bering Island. He also recounted his observations of sea lions, sea otters, and northern fur seals. In addition to the sea cow and Steller’s jay, many of the other animals that Steller collected or described were later named for him. Included in this list are the mollusk Cryptochiton stelleri, Steller’s eider (Polysticta stelleri; named by German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas), Steller’s sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus), and Steller’s sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus).