From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Peter Simon Pallas (September 22, 1741 - September 8, 1811) was a German zoologist.
In 1768 Pallas became a professor at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and between 1769 and 1774 he led an expedition to Siberia collecting natural history specimens on their behalf. He explored the upper Amur, the Caspian Sea, and the Ural and Altai mountains, reaching as far eastward as Lake Baikal.
Between 1793 and 1794 he led a second expedition to southern Russia, visting the Crimea and the Black Sea.
In 1772 Pallas was shown a 700 kilogram lump of metal which had been found near to the city of Krasnojarsk. Pallas arranged for it to be transported back to St Petersburg. Subsequent analysis of the metal showed that it was a new type of stony-iron meteorite. This new type of meteorites are called Pallasites after him whereas the meteorite itself is today named Krasnojarsk or sometimes also called Pallas Iron (the name given to it by Ernst Chladni in 1794).
A number of animals are named after him, including Pallas Cat, Pallas's Warbler, Pallas's Gull, Pallas's Sandgrouse and Pallas's Reed Bunting.
