Georgiy Jacobson


Georgiy Georgiyevich Jacobson was a pioneering Russian entomologist, known especially for his 900-page book on Beetles.
s, a colour plate in Jacobson's Beetles, 1905

Biography

Jacobson was born in St Petersburg, and in 1893 he graduated from St Petersburg University's Physics and Mathematics faculty. He was a zoologist at the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was posted to different parts of Russia to study its insects. He published papers mainly on the systematics and zoogeography of Chrysomelidae beetles.

Beetles

Jacobson's Beetles was first published in 1905 by Devriena, St Petersburg. The eleventh and last edition appeared in 1915. Many of the fine colour plates were based on Carl Gustav Calwer's Kaeferbuch, with updates to the names of some of the beetles. This saving of effort on illustration allowed Jacobson to focus on illustrating species of beetle that had never been illustrated before. The monograph covered over 2000 species.

Works

Jacobson is best known as the author of the magisterial 900-page Beetles of Russia, Western Europe and neighbouring countries, and co-author, with Valentin Lvovich Bianchi, of Orthoptera and Pseudoneuroptera of the Russian Empire.
His other works include the following: