His father Dmitry was a councillor and his mother Varvara was a nephew of Decembrist Mikhail Alexandrovich Nazimov.
graduated from the mining cadet corps school in St Petersburg in 1831 and then began to teach there.
In 1857 he was promoted to major general and headed mining, particularly of gold, in the Altai region.
He translated the work Sir Roderick Murchison and colleagues on the geology of the Urals.
He returned to St. Petersburg in 1864 and served in the Imperial Cabinet and in the Mining Scientific Committee.