Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai

  Nicholai Nicholaevich Miklukho-Maklai (Николай Николаевич Миклухо-Маклай in Russian; sometimes spelled as Nicolai Nicolaevich de Miklouho-Maclay^[1]) (1846 – 1888) was a Russian ethnologist, anthropologist and biologist.

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Miklukho-Maklai was born in a temporary workers camp near Novgorod, a son of a civil engineer working on the construction of the Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway. He attended a grammar school in Saint Petersburg, then went on to study at St. Petersburg University.

He travelled and studied widely in Europe, and became a close friend of the biologist Anton Dohrn, with whom he helped conceive the idea of research stations while staying with him at Messina, Italy.

Miklukho-Maklai left St Petersburg for Australia on the schooner Vityaz. He arrived in Sydney on 18 July, 1878. A few days after arriving, he approached the Linnean Society and offered to organise a zoological centre. In September 1878 his offer was approved. The centre, known as the Maritime Biological Centre, was constructed by prominent Sydney architect, John Kirkpatrick. This facility, located in Watsons Bay on the east side of the Greater Sydney, was the first marine biological research institute in Australia.^[1]

He visited Papua New Guinea on a number of occasions, and lived amongst the native tribes, writing a comprehensive treatise on their way of life and customs.

He married Margaret-Emma Robertson, daughter of the Premier of New South Wales, John Robertson. In 1887 he left Australia and returned to St Petersburg to present his work to the Russian Geographical Society, taking his young family with him. Miklukho-Maklai was in poor health at this time and it was a trip from which he did not return. Despite treatment from Sergei Botkin, Miklukho-Maklai died of an undiagnosed brain tumour, aged 42, in St Petersburg. He was buried in the Volkovo cemetery, but left his skull to the St. Petersburg Military and Medical Academy.

  Miklukho-Maklai's widow returned to Sydney with their children. Until 1917 the scientist's family received a Russian pension. The money was first allocated by Alexander III and then by Nicholas II.

The building of the Maritime Biological Centre was commandeered by the Australian Ministry of Defence in 1899, as a barracks for officers. The Russian ethnic community in Australia lobbied for the centre to be made into a historical landmark in memory of Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai's scientific work. In 2001, the last military personnel left the building and the building was returned to the public. A bust of Miklukho-Maklai was unveiled to commemorate the occasion.

In the country of his birth, his life is commemorated through the name of the N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow and a street in the south-west of Moscow, where the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (Lumumba University) is situated.

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