Alexander Theodor von Middendorff

Then, Alexander Theodor von Middendorff measured temperatures to depths of approximately 100 metres (328 feet) of permafrost in the Shargin shaft, an unsuccessful well dug for the governor of the Russian-Alaskan Trading Company, at Yakutsk, and estimated that the permafrost was 215 metres (705 feet) thick.…

The Russian naturalist Alexander von Middendorf is credited with introducing the word into scientific literature in 1881.