Sergei Alferaki

Sergei Alferaki

Sergei Nikolaevich Alphéraky (1850–1918) was a Russian ornithologist and entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera.

Sergei Alphéraky was born into a noble Greek family of Alferakis, brother to composer Achilles Alferaki, his father Nikos Alferakis owned the Alferaki Palace in Taganrog. Sergei studied at Moscow University (1867–1869), then with Otto Staudinger in Dresden (1871–1873).On his return to Russia he worked on the Lepidoptera of the Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don region. He also collected in the North Caucasus.After that he devoted himself to the insects, especially the Lepidoptera, of Central Asia. He worked on the Lepidoptera collected by Nikolai Przhevalsky in Tibet held by the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Science and those collected by Grigorij Nikolaevich Potanin in China and Mongolia and in the same institution.Later he studied the collections made by Alfred Otto Herz in Amur, Korea,and Kamchatka and those of Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanoff a friend from his two years at Moscow University. He was an Honorary Member of both the Russian Entomological Society and the Royal Entomological Society of London.