Robert Erskine ( c 1674 - 1719 )

Birth: c 1674 Death: Olonez, Russia (30 November 1718) Burial Place: Convent of Alexander Nevsky, outside St Petersburg, Russia Profession: Physician Surgeon Education: Edinburgh (admitted 1691); apprenticed to Hugh Patterson, Surgeon, of Edinburgh (1692-1697); Paris; Utrecht; MD (1700) Career: Practised in London (1701-1704); In the summer of 1704 he left for Moscow to take up a post as physician to Prince Aleksandr Danilovich Menzicoff (FRS 1714); appointed Physician to Peter the Great in January 1705, and promoted to be his principal doctor and Archiater of the entire Russuan medical corps (1706); directed the transfer of the Apothecaries Chancery form Moscow, supervised the formation of a libreary and natural history museum at Peter's Summer Palace, and oversaw the founding of a large physic garden on Apothecaries Island of the new capital in February 1714 (precursor to the Komarov Botanical Institute); travelled with the Czar to Germany, Holland and France (1716); at his death he left a library of 4200 volumes and a cabinet of minerals, shells and medals Erskine buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the Russian Orthodox complex, in January 1719 next to Princess Natalia, sister of Tsar Peter the Great.