Prussian/German Zoologist and Botanist. The son of a surgeon, he attended the University of Gottingen in Gottingen, Germany and the University of Leiden in Leiden, Netherlands, and graduated with his doctor's degree in 1760. Afterwards, he settled at The Hague, Netherlands, and began work on a new system of animal classification. He wrote "Miscellanea Zoologica" (1766), which included descriptions of several vertebrates new to science which he had discovered in the Dutch museum collections. In 1767 he was invited by Catherine II (Catherine the Great) of Russia to become a professor at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and between 1768 and 1774, he led an expedition to central Russian provinces, Povolzhye, Urals, West Siberia, Altay, and Transbaikal, collecting natural history specimens for the academy. He explored the Caspian Sea, the Ural and Altai Mountains and the upper Amur River, reaching as far eastward as Lake Baikal. His reports were collected and published as "Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs" (Journey Through Various Provinces of the Russian Empire - 1771 to 1776), covering a wide range of topics, including geology and mineralogy, reports on the native peoples and their religions, and descriptions of new plants and animals. In 1776 he became a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1809 he became associate member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. In 1810 he returned to Berlin where he died at the age of 69. Several animals were described by him, and his surname is included in their common names, including the Pallas's glass lizard, the Pallas's viper, the Pallas's cat, the Pallas's long-tongued bat, the Pallas's tube-nosed bat, the Pallas's squirrel, the Pallas's leaf warbler, the Pallas's cormorant, the Pallas's fish-eagle, the Pallas's gull, the Pallas's sandgrouse, the Pallas's rosefinch, and the Pallas's grasshopper warbler. The Pallasite Meteorite, found in 1772, is named in his honor as is the asteroid 21087 Petsimpallas.