Alexander Petrunkevitch (1875-1964) was born in Pliski, a Ukrainian town near Kiev. His aristocratic father, Ivan hutch Petrunkevitch, was a founder of the Constitutional Democratic Party and a member of the first Duma (a Russian national parliament during czarist times). As a young boy, Alexander developed an interest in natural history, and one of his first published pieces, while he attended the University of Moscow, concerned the beetle. Because of his friendship with the Bromleys, an English family who built a factory in Russia during its industrial development, Petrunkevitch learned to be a skilled machinist. In addition to his scientific writing, his other literary interests included writing two volumes of poetry: during his university days as well as later in his life he published under the pseudonym Alexandr Jan-Ruban. Petrunkevitch also wrote an English prose translation of the works of the Russian poet Pushkin.

Peabody Museum, Yale University: Entomology

From the site: "Important lepidopteran collections include those donated by Frank Morton Jones, Herman Wilhelm, Sidney Hessel, Don Stallings, P. S. Remington, William Wright, and Margaret Cary, among others. Other important collections include the following: arachnids from Alexander Petrunkevitch; Orthoptera from A. P. Morse; Coleoptera from Carlo Brivio; water beetles from Grace Pickford, Evelyn Hutchinson, Dodge, and F. N. Young; and midges from M. W. Boesel."

Scientific American Online

Here is the online version of the magazine that has tracked key changes in science and technology for the past 150 years.

The Spider and the Wasp