[4] A self-taught scientist, he eventually received three gold medals from the Russian Geographical Society, and his name was given to a settlement, two mountain ranges, several peaks and other sites.

[4] Son of Xenia and Dominik Czerski, members of the Lithuanian-Polish[1] nobility, he was born in Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire (now Belarus).

He was captured and taken prisoner on 28 April 1863, and then stripped of his noble status, his lands confiscated and repossessed by another family member loyal to the Russian government.

During this time he was befriended by several Poles living in exile in the Omsk region, including: Marczewski and Kwiatkowski, as well as a Russian geographer, Grigory Nikolayevich Potanin.

In 1871 he received permission to move to Irkutsk where he met other Polish exiles, turned scholars, Aleksander Czekanowski and Benedykt Dybowski.

The result was the first geological map of that coast, for which Czerski was awarded a gold medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Czerski later put forward the idea for the development of topographic reliefs (1878) and produced one of the first analyses of the tectonics of central Asia (1886) and pioneered geomorphological evolution theory.

Several landmarks in Siberia were named in his honour, including: In 2016, after being acquired by Gazprom, the pipe-layer "Jascon 18" was renamed "Akademik Cherskiy".