Friedrich Plenisner and his contribution to the study of the indigenous population and the nature of the Russian Far East in the XVIIIth century

In the middle of the XVIII century Russia was actively engaged in the exploration of the northeast Asia and the Pacific islands. For this purpose the Academy of Sciences, the Senate and other state bodies initiated and organized several expeditions. The names of V. Bering, A. Chirikov, G. Miller, G. Steller, S. Krasheninnikov are world famous. However, there were lesser-known people who played an active role in this process. One of them was Russian officer Friedrich Plenisner, the participant of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, later an organizer of a number of local expeditions in the Medvezh'i and the Kurile Islands. Plenisner is known as a topographer, compiler of several maps and the plan of the Petropavlovsk harbor. As a painter, he made sketches of the aboriginal peoples, nature and wildlife. As a researcher, he was the author of several works summarizing ethnographic, geographical, and historical facts about northeast Russia of the XVIII century. Ethnographic materials about the Chukchi, Eskimos, and other indigenous peoples of Chukchi Peninsula, Alaska and the Kuril Islands were collected under his instruction.