University of Leiden Academy Building in the Netherlands. Source: universiteitleiden.nl

              From an early age, Peter Simon Pallas was a scholar. His father, Simon Pallas, was a well-known surgeon who educated young Peter Simon Pallas in his field of expertise. Pallas’s father was hoping to encourage him to follow in his medical footsteps. Pallas learned to write in Latin, English, French, and German, although, most of his writings were in his native language of German. At the age of fifteen, his interest in the natural sciences became evident as he attempted to create a new system for classifying animals (St. John, 65-66). However, his medical education continued in Germany, where he attended the University of Halle and the University of Göttingen. He then earned a doctorate in medicine, in 1960, at the age of 19 from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands (yovisto.com). After finishing his doctoral degree, Pallas travelled to England and Holland from 1961 to 1966 to further educate himself on the natural histories of other lands. His main focus of study in these areas was marine life such as various invertebrates and corals (Natural History Museum). He then published the first scientific paper in 1766 titled Miscellanea Zoologica which revealed several new species of animals he found in Dutch museums (yovisto.com). During this time, he made some of the first scientific strides in his career through his publication of Elenchus Zoophytorium. In this paper, he created an original technique he used to classify animals. Pallas presented the concept of categorizing animals using a structure similar to the shape of a tree. He believed that different species were related by “zoophytes” or “animal-plants” such as coral and sponges (Parker 55). He suggested that the animal characteristics of these organisms may mean that they are not simply plants as they appear. With this method, Pallas could relate different species of animals to one another. His findings were respected by his colleagues and won him recognition in his field when they were later supported by Charles Darwin’s findings. This recognition won him a membership to the Accademia dei Lincei (saint-petersburg.com).