Sergei Buturlin

A scion of one of the oldest families of Russian nobility, Buturlin spent most his life in Russia although he was born in the Swiss town of Montreux along with a twin brother Alexander who died at the age of seven.

He went to a classical gymnasium in Simbirsk (modern Ulyanovsk) and studied jurisprudence in St. Petersburg from 1890 and graduated with a gold medal in 1894-95.

Buturlin married Vera Vladimirovna Markova, the sister of a law school classmate, in 1898.

[1] Although his position paid a salary, his interest in zoology was greater and he spent most of his career collecting specimens across Russia and Siberia and describing the results of his observations.

These were raided during the 1917 revolution and thought to be lost, however some of the material was rediscovered after Buturlin's death in the Simbirsk Folk Museum.