In 1805, he was part of a scientific team attached to the unsuccessful diplomatic mission of Count Yury Golovkin to China.
In 1806, while in Yakutsk, he heard about an intact woolly mammoth carcass near the mouth of the Lena River.
He hastily arranged an expedition to the location where he was able to recover most of the skeleton, skin, and almost forty pounds of hair.
The skeleton is now on display at The Museum of Zoology in Saint Petersburg, where it is known as the Adams mammoth.
Later in his life, he taught as assistant professor for botanics at the Medico-Surgical Academy of Moscow.