Taras Petrovich Gordeev as a botanist and educator

Abstract

The article describes the life of Taras Petrovich Gordeev (1875–1967), a graduate of the New Alexandria Institute of Agriculture and Horticulture (1898). Having arrived to the Far East with a diploma as an agronomist and working as a teacher at the Nikolsk-Ussuri Women’s Seminary, he did a lot to promote natural science research in Primorye. He founded the botanical garden, which later became the academic Gornotayozhnaya Station, organized exhibitions and delivered reports, he was among those who initiated organizing of the South Ussuri branch of the Amur Department of the Russian Geographical Society (1916) and the First Congress on the researching the Ussuri region in natural history (1922). His own scientific interests were related to the study of vegetation of the South Ussuri region. Having left for China in October 1922, Gordeev continued his scientific and pedagogical activities in Harbin, where he was an employee of a number of Russian scientific and educational organizations, including the Society for the Manchurian Region Study and the Harbin Local Lore Museum, and participated in N. K. Roerich’ expedition to the Bargi region (1934), published scientific works on northeast China. The article is based on the documents and literature found in foreign libraries and archives, as well as in private collections.