Friedrich Schmidt was a Livonian (Estonian) botanist and geologist. He served as Director of the Mineralogical Museum in St. Petersburg and travelled extensively in Siberia.

Born in Kaisma, Governate of Livonia, Schmidt studied botany at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu) from 1849-1853. He remained at the university as a botanical assistant and assistant director of the botanical gardens until 1859, during which period he collected plants and mineralogical specimens in Estonia.

Schmidt spent the next three years conducting extensive explorations of northern Siberia, where he made botanical collections and studied the geology and fauna. The expedition, mounted by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, traversed the Transbaikal, Sakhalin, Daurian, Amur and Manchurian regions.

Following the expedition Schmidt moved to St. Petersburg to work on his collections, and published articles on subjects including the glacial deposits of Estonia and Silurian ichthyology. In 1866 he embarked on another Siberian expedition, during which he discovered a mammoth, the first to be found with soft body parts preserved.

After a restorative break in Germany from 1867-1870, Schmidt returned to Estonia, where he was offered financial support to continue studies of Palaezoic rocks. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1872, where he was appointed to the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1874 he took up the directorship of the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Museum, and began to focus his research on fossils, especially trilobites, and stratigraphy.

Schmidt would remain at the Museum for 27 years, while trilobites proved to be his research focus for the rest of his days. He was awarded the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society of London in 1890 in recognition of his work, which included more than 200 publications.

Sources:
I. Tolmachev, 1909, Annuaire Géologique et Mineralogique de la Russie, 11: 277-290.