skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

Wladimir Schmankewitsch (Владимир Шманкевич)

1839–80

Russian zoologist. Schoolteacher in Odessa. Carried out research on the brine shrimp and published several works between 1872 and 1877. Suggested that the brine shrimp, Artemia, could progressively transform into Branchipus (the fairy shrimp) in low saline conditions. Attacked for godlessness as a result of his work, he was accused of stealing a lens from a microscope; committed suicide. His experimental work was heavily criticised from the 1890s onwards.

Sources

Plavilshchikov 1941

Vucinich 1988, pp. 84–5, 158–9, 371

Bibliography

Plavilshchikov, Nikolai Nikolaievich [Плавильщиков, Николай Николаевич]. 1941. Ocherku po istorii zoologii [Очерки по истории зоологии]. Moscow: State Academic-pedagogical Press.

Vucinich, Alexander. 1988. Darwin in Russian thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.

letter