The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences had many members of German extraction like Wilhelm Radloff (1837-1918), Wilhelm Barthold (1869-1930) and S.F. Oldenburg (1863-1934) to quote just a few well-known names. Another scholar seems less known — in spite of the fact that he did ground-breaking research, published prolifically and promoted Russian scholarship abroad: Anton Schiefner (1817-1879) who served as a curator of the 2nd Section of the Academic Library (since 1848), adjunct for Tibetan (since 1852), and Academician extraordinary (since 1854). From 1856-1878, he was also director of the Ethnological Museum and, in 1860-1879, head of the 2nd section of the Academic Library. There is an entry in the Russian Biographical Dictionary but Schiefner’s name is only briefly mentioned in historical works — usually listing some of his publications but without giving much further information...
PDF-files
