Onésime Clerc

Clerc was born in Corcelles{{cite web |last1=de Coulon |first1=Baptiste |title=Dans quelle maison de Corcelles habitait Onésime Clerc (Они́сим Его́рович Клер), fondateur du Musée d'histoire naturelle d'Iekaterinbourg (Russie), en 1862? |date=24 July 2014 |url=http://www.siar.ch/?p=220 |access-date=22 November 2020}} and graduated from the trade school in Neuchâtel.{{cite web |title=Clerc, Onésime |url=https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/articles/042908/2003-12-18/ |access-date=22 November 2020}} The family circumstances did not allow him to study at university.

In 1862, Clerc emigrated to the Russian Empire and became a French home teacher with the Trubetskoy family in Moscow. After taking an exam at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, he was allowed to teach French at educational institutions. After three years in Moscow, he worked in Yaroslavl, where he participated in the work of the local scientific society.

In 1867, Clerc became a French teacher at the boys' high school in Yekaterinburg, which opened in 1861. He explored the nature and sights in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg. The director of the high school and his colleagues as well as the director of the Yekaterinburg Mining School {{Ill|Narkiz Chupin|ru|Чупин, Наркиз Константинович}} supported him. Soon he founded the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers, whose secretary and later president he remained until his death, and the UOLJ Museum, which opened at the end of 1870 and later became the local history museum of Sverdlovsk Oblast.{{cite book |last1=Корепанова |first1=С. А. |title=История Екатеринбурга в деятельности Уральского общества любителей естествознания. Издательство УМЦ УПИ |date=2013 |location=Yekaterinburg |isbn=978-5-8295-0234-8}}

In 1870, Clerc married the daughter of a priest Nataliya Solotova, with whom he had four children. The eldest son Vladimir studied at the University of Geneva and became a biologist. The second son Modeste became a geologist. The third son Georgi became a zoologist. The youngest child Kristiana became a French teacher in Shadrinsk.

Clerc published geological and natural history works. He named botanical taxa. In the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, his name appears in the form Clerc.{{cite journal |title=Clerc, George Onésime |journal=The International Plant Names Index |url=https://www.ipni.org/a/1691-1 |access-date=22 November 2020}} He was a member of more than 20 foreign and Russian scientific societies.

Clerc died on 18 January 1920 in Yekaterinburg.

The annual award for the best museum project in the Urals bears Clerc's name.{{cite web |title=Актуальная информация |url=http://www.mkso.ru/public/233 |access-date=22 November 2020}} In 2015, the first Clerc monument in Russia was erected at the entrance to the local history museum in Yekaterinburg.{{cite web |title=В центре Екатеринбурга поставили памятник швейцарцу, который создал самый большой краеведческий музей Урала |url=https://www.e1.ru/news/spool/news_id-424365.html |access-date=22 November 2020}}

• Order of the Polar Star
• Ordre des Palmes Académiques

• Pavel L. Gorchakovsky, Claude Favarger, Philippe Küpfer, [https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=bsn-002:1995:118#23 Onésime Clerc (1845-1920), naturaliste: un neuchâtelois en Russie], in: Bulletin de la Société neuchâteloise des sciences naturelles, 118, 1995, p. 15-26. : ill (French).
• Rudolf Mumenthaler, Im Paradies der Gelehrten, 1996 (German).

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Category:Russian naturalists

Category:Swiss emigrants to the Russian Empire

Category:Naturalists from the Russian Empire

Category:19th-century botanists from the Russian Empire

Category:20th-century Russian botanists

Category:1845 births

Category:1920 deaths