Boris K. Stegmann


Boris Karlovich Stegmann was a Russian ornithologist of German descent who worked on zoogeography.
Stegmann was born in Pskov, Russia. He worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1921 in the ornithology department. He became a research assistant in 1928 and worked on various bird groups. In 1938 he published his ideas on nine avifaunal centres within the Old World. This was an influential work in its time. In 1941, his German ancestry led to his removal from work in Russia and deportation to Kazakhstan. Exiled in central Asia, he continued his research on birds in the region until 1954. In 1964 he published a volume on the birds of the Soviet Union along with Aleksandr Ivanovich Ivanov. He also worked on molluscs and on the evolution of birds. In 1978 his work on the comparative anatomy of the avian forelimb was published posthumously with a preface by Walter Bock.