Tadas Ivanauskas – the Most Famous Lithuanian Naturalist

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There is hardly anyone in Lithuania who hasn’t visited the Tadas Ivanauskas Zoological Museum or the Kaunas Zoo, which he established together with his peers. The museum is one of the oldest museums in Lithuania and the only zoological museum in the Baltic States. Student tours from various parts of Lithuania are constantly organised, and photos of exotic reptiles and birds remind them of their visit. Ivanauskas also founded the Ventė Cape Ornithological Station and established the Žuvintas Reserve in 1937. In addition, he wrote many books about nature and, together with his wife Honorata Paškauskaitė, organised nature conservation campaigns, which were a complete novelty in the first decades of the twentieth century. The life story of Ivanauskas is no less impressive: a noble background, an international education and a mystery about where and when he obtained his doctorate.

Ivanauskas was born in 1882 in Lebiodka manor in the territory of present-day Belarus. The parents of the future scientist – Leonardas Ivanauskas and Jadvyga Reichel – were nobles. They spoke Polish, Belarusian, and French, but not Lithuanian in his childhood home. Ivanauskas began to study Lithuanian in 1903 when he was studying natural sciences at Saint Petersburg University. In his memoirs, he states that it was then that he chose to be Lithuanian.

Ivanauskas was greatly influenced by his father. It was he who introduced the boy to taxidermy, the making of stuffed animals. It is said that Tadas had made 100 stuffed birds by the time he was ten. His father then ordered a special case for the stuffed animals and they both donated the collection to Vosyliškės school.

Ivanauskas studied natural sciences not only in St. Petersburg, but also at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He founded an innovative company – the science laboratory Zootom – in 1910 in St. Petersburg. Today, such a company would be called a start-up: Zootom produced devices for zoology, botany, anatomy and mineralogy. Ivanauskas also met his future wife in St. Petersburg – a nature lover named Paškauskaitė. The married couple returned to Lithuania in 1919 and opened a school in Varėna district. Unfortunately, the school was closed after the Polish army occupied Vilnius. However, this misfortune did not frustrate Ivanauskas: he settled in Kaunas and began active scientific and science popularisation work, which lasted until his death in 1970.

Despite the respect and recognition he has received, Ivanauskas is also criticised today. For example, it is said that he reached the heights of his career not only because of his talent, but also because of his favor for the Soviet government which occupied Lithuania. There are also doubts about his scientific degrees: it is believed that Ivanauskas did not receive a doctoral degree for his dissertation (a large-scale research work), but for only a few articles. However, there is no doubt that the naturalist, zoologist and biologist Ivanauskas has raised many generations of nature lovers – he has taught them how to understand nature, but also how to take care of it.