Alexander Georg von Bunge (; – ) was a Russian botanist. He is best remembered for scientific expeditions into Asia and especially Siberia. Early life and education Bunge was born under the name, Alexander Andreevič von Bunge on in Kyiv as second son of a family that belonged to the German minority in Tsarist Russia. HIs father, Andreas Theodor was a pharmacist who had emigrated from East Prussia to Russia with his grandfather in the 18th century and his mother, Elisabeth von Bunge, . They moved to Dorpat in 1815 after his father's death in 1814 and attended highschool from 1818 to 1821. He was educated at Dorpat and where he passed through the gymnasium during the period of 1821–1825. Then, he studied medicine and obtained his Doctorate of Medicine from University of Tartu on 1825. He also studied botany there under Carl Friedrich von Ledebour and completed his thesis entitled De relatione methodi plantarum naturalis in vires vegetabilium medicalis Expedition to Siberia At early January, he worked as Head of Metallurgy in the Kolyvan-Voskresensker factory under P. K. Frolov and as district physician in Barnaul (Tomsk Governorate) which located in Southern Siberia. The same year he went with Ledebour and Carl Anton von Meyer on an important scientific expedition to the Kazakh Steppe and Altai Mountains. They spent five weeks across Russia to Barnaul during the summer and collected 1,600 plant specimens, which formed the basis of the Flora Altaica. This book was published in four volumes between 1829 and 1833. After the expedition, Bunge lived in Kolyvan and transferred to Zmeinogorsk until 1830. After recommendation by Alexander von Humboldt, whom Bunge met in 1829 when Humboldt visited Altai, he was given a scientific mission to Peking by the Academy of St.Petersburg. Humboldt was on an expedition financed by Tsar Nicholas. He was accompanied by Colonel Ladijenski as pristav (escort) and Dr. P. Kirilov as physician. Apart from him there were other researchers, including Georg Albert von Fuss as astronomer and metereologist, and Kovanko as mineralogist. All of them were part of the eleventh ecclesiastical mission, which happened regularly, and were also to pick up the emissary for the tenth ecclesiastical mission. They went to Peking from the border town Kjachta at the end of O.S August 1830 via Urga in September 1830, and arrived in Peking on 17 November 1830 after crossing the Gobi Desert, and spent the