Matvei Matveyevich Gedenshtrom (; ; 1780 – ) was a Russian explorer of Northern Siberia, writer, and public servant. Matvei Gedenshtrom was born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire to Mathias Hedenström (1733–1799), a Swedish political refugee from Dalarna. Matvei Gedenshtrom himself was still a Swedish citizen in 1798. Gedenshtrom attended the University of Tartu. He did not finish his studies and left his alma mater in favor of work at Tallinn customs. Until 1806, he worked in Riga as a translator for Count Friedrich von Buxhoeveden, the Governor-General of the Baltic provinces. In 1808, while working as secretary to a customs inspector, he was arrested in connection with a bribery affair, tried, and then banished to Siberia. Later that year, Gedenshtrom arrived in Irkutsk and received his first duty assignment by Minister of Commerce Nikolay Rumyantsev, namely, the exploration of the coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Lacking necessary scientific background, Matvei Gedenshtrom had to study a lot in order to be able to reckon a latitude and longitude of a given location and use scientific equipment in general. Gedenshtrom led the cartographic expedition to explore the New Siberian Islands (together with Yakov Sannikov and land surveyors Pyotr Pshenitsyn and I.Kozhevin). The theory about the existence of Sannikov Land somewhere northwest of the Kotelny Island originated during this very expedition. Gedenshtrom established the presence of the Siberian polynya – patches of open water in sea ice at the edge of the drifting ice and continental fast ice. In 1809, Gedenshtrom visited the eastern shores of an island, discovered by merchants Semyon and Lev Syrovatsky three years earlier, and named it New Siberia (this name would be officially endorsed in 1810). Gedenshtrom charted the coastline between the mouths of the rivers Yana and Kolyma. He also made many trips across Yakutia and areas east of the Lake Baikal. In 1813, Matvei Gedenshtrom was employed by the secretariat of Irkutsk governor. Later on, he was appointed head of district police (исправник) in Verkhne-Udinsk, which did not distract him from scientific research and compiling his mineralogical and botanic collection. Matvei Gedenshtrom was a smart, talented, educated, and kind man, who often helped local peasants with advice and money. However, he was also known to have been an immoral person and a squanderer. He was one of the closest associates of Nikolai Treskin (then-governor of Irkutsk) and made a sizeable fortune on