Viktor Pisarzhevsky

Viktor Dmitrievich Pisarzhevsky ( – 1903) was a Russian lichenologist who also served as a notary in Bessarabia. As a student at Imperial Moscow University, he compiled and published an early literature-based checklist of lichens reported from parts of the Russian Empire, issued as "the first published list of lichens of Russia" in the late 1890s. After graduating, he returned to Kishinev and worked as a notary; his career and life ended with suicide in 1903.

Life and career

Early life and education Pisarzhevsky was born in Kishinev (present-day Chișinău, Moldova) on 8 November 1876 (O.S.) to Dmitry Ignatevich Pisarzhevsky, a notary and landowner, and Olga Ivanovna Pisarzhevskaya. He was baptized in the city in December 1876, and grew up in a family described in archival sources as hereditary nobility. He had a younger sister, Lidiya, and a younger brother, Dmitrii.