Russian plant collector. Ivan Petrovic (or 'Johann') Kirilov (sometimes spelt Kirilow) was born in the Siberian town of Yalturovsk in 1821 and died while still a young man at Arzamas in September 1842. In the six years before his death, Kirilov explored Siberia with G.S. Karelin, travelling with some 50 Cossacks for protection.
Kirilov studied in Tobolsk and Irkutsk, where he met the renowned botanist N.S. Turczaninow. Turczaninow instructed the young Kirilov in botany between 1835 and 1837, taking him on collecting trips to the coast of Lake Baikal and the western Baikal Mountains. Impressed with Kirilov's aptitude for botany, his tutor took him to St. Petersburg to help him enrol at the university. The industrious student subsequently met Karelin, an experienced explorer and naturalist, who unofficially adopted him into his family. Karelin was asked in 1839 to take charge of a scientific expedition to the Altai and Tarbagatai Mountains and Dzungaria, for the Société de Naturalistes de Moscou.
Karelin chose to take his protégé, Kirilov, with him and they set off on their Siberian adventures in March 1840, with Kirilov in charge of botanical collecting. He also made most of the identifications and completed the plant enumerations under the supervision of Karelin and Turczaninov. On the expedition, Kirilov left Karelin in order to independently explore Lake Nor-Zaissan and the northern slopes of the Tarbagatai range. In this first year, some 38,000 botanical specimens were shipped to Moscow, as well as zoological and geological items.
In 1841 the party moved on to the Altai and Semirechensk region. Despite having to fend off attacks by hostile Kyrgyzs ('barantachi'), the party managed to gather 55,000 botanical specimens in this year. Kirilov was sent that autumn to Krasnoyarsk, where he worked on some of the collections under Turczaninow's supervision. The latter contributed significantly to the Ennumeratio plantarum, with its list of nearly 1,900 species (220 of them new, plus eight new genera).
Tragedy struck the following year when Kirilov contracted cholera and quickly died. He was in transit at the time, at Arzamas. Karelin, who loved him as much as his own children, was devastated at the news and remained depressed for many months. He never published another botanical paper in his life and the identification and description of the expedition's specimens from 1842-1844 fell to S.S. Shchegleev. Karelin continued with his expedition for another three years. Files on the expedition were subsequently lost from the Moscow Society of Naturalists, though Karelin’s family preserved other papers relating to it.
Sources:
V.C. Asmous, 1943, "Karelin (1801-1872) and Kirilov (1821-1842), Explorers of Siberia and Middle Asia", Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 24(1): 107-117
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 2: 294
.P. Borodin, 1908, Travaux du Musée Botanique de l'Academie Imperiale des Sciences de St-Petersbourg, 4: 46-47
E. Lindeman, Bulletin de la Société imperiale des naturalistes de Moscou 60: 311.
