Born: April 30, 1833, Adamaryn, Russian partition of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (presently- Belarus)
Died: 31 January, 1930, Lwow, Poland (presently Lviv, Ukraine)
Early days. Born to a noble family (coat of arms Nalecz). Father- Jan, mother- Salomea nee Przesiecka. Dybowski's father took part in the uprisings of 1831 and 1863 against the Russian occupation of part of Poland. After graduating from a Minsk high school in 1853 Benedykt Dybowski entered the medical faculty of Dorpat University (presently Tartu, Estonia). During 1857-1858 he continued his studies in Germany in Breslau University (presently Wroclaw, Poland) and during 1858-1860 he studied paleontology, botany and medicine in Berlin. He got a doctorate in 1860 on the basis of his works on bees. During this time he became acquainted with Darwin’s work and became an ardent advocate of the theory of evolution. Dybowski returned to Dorpat in 1861 where in 1862 he got a second doctorate for his work on ichtiology.
Underground activity; beginning of research work. In 1861 Dybowski took part in a political demonstration in the Vilnius Cathedral. This led to his arrest and a short term incarceration. In 1862 he was employed as an adjoint professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in the Szkola Glowna in Warsaw. In 1863 he took part in the January Uprising against Russia as a member of the Central National Committee. A year later he was arrested and condemned to death by hanging. Thanks to the intervention of his former German and Livonian professors and of German Chancellor Bismarck the death penalty was commuted to 12 years of deportation to hard labor in Siberia. The convicts had a right to choose a place of exile by themselves. Dybowski chose a site where he hoped to get rich scientific materials.
Deportation to hard labor. In 1864 began his and other deportees trip to Siberia via Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhniy Novgorod by train and the remaining 2,500 miles by „kibitka”. At first Dybowski was placed in Irkutsk prison, and in the spring of 1865 he was moved to the village Syvakova near Chita. Dybowski gained respect both among other deportees and among Russian officials. In 1866 he was moved to work as doctor in a hospital in Darsoon, a site of mineral waters. He worked for a long time as a doctor in Chita and was allowed to visit patients without a guard. In autumn 1868 Dybowski was moved to Irkutsk, and later to Kultuk and began three year study of Baikal Lake. He described 116 new species of crustaceans and six new species of fishes. In 1869 Dybowski took part in the work of State Commission in the Amur basin. In 1872 Dybowski was permitted to conduct research in the Far East. Together with Godlewski and Jankowski, during 1872-1875 period, they examined fauna in the valleys of Argun and of Ussuri, in the Chanka lake and the Askold island. They shipped their findings to Warsaw. The most interesting was the discovery of new variety of deer, later called Dybowski’s deer and an unusual fish-„golomyanka.” At the end of 1874 Dybowski and friends moved to the Peter the Great Bay. Here they stayed till August 1875.
Kamchatka and humanitarian activity. In 1877, thanks to the support of prominent scientists, he and his friends were allowed to return to their homeland. In 1878 he got the position of a district physician in Petropavlowsk on Kamchatka. He arrived there in 1879 after a six month journey. His four years stay was very fruitful: he established a hospital for suffering from leprosies and from syphilis; explored the Commandor Islands and have written their detailed description; bought at his own expense horses and reindeer and gave them to Aleutians- the inhabitants of Bering Island. He also stayed for some time on Sakhalin Island where he learned the Aino language and has written its dictionary.
Lwow (presently Lviv, Ukraine). In 1883 he accepted the invitation of the University of Lwow (then Lemberg) to become the Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. In 1884 he founded the Zoological Museum. In 1903 the Museum received a skeleton of a sea cow as a token of gratitude from the inhabitants of Bering Islands. He was doing research on comparative anatomy, systematics and anthropology. Dybowski retired in 1906 but continued to publish research articles. During the war in 1914 Dybowski was in his sister's estate in Nyan'ka (presently in Belarus). After WWI he moved to Lwow and was active in atheist and anti-alcohol movements. He died in Lwow in 1930 and was buried on the Lyczakow (presently Lychakiv) cemetery among the participants of the Polish 1863 Uprising. A list of his works includes 175 articles and 11 completed manuscripts. Not much we know about his private life except that he married a woman named Helena who was 30 years his junior.
Honors and awards. 1877 Gold Medal of the St.Petersburg Geographical Society;1878 Elected Fellow of the Russian Geographical Society; St.Stanislas Medal from the Russian authorities; 1921 Honorary doctorate at Warsaw University; 1923 Honorary professorship at the University of Wilno (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) ; 1927 elected member correspondent of the Soviet Academy of Sciences ; he was a member of PAU (Polish Academy of Knowledge); a variety of deer was named after him, one of the hills on the Commandor Islands was named after him.
Sources:
Wikipedia (in Polish)
Polonia Life (Dybowska; in Polish)
Interia.pl (in Polish)
Zoological Museum in Lviv
Swiat Polonii (in Polish)
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