Alexander petrovich karpinsky biography of alberta

Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky was born in 1847, in Russia's Ural Mountains. The son and grandson of copper mining engineers, he spent his childhood in an area boasting a copper mine from the Bronze Age.

The Urals provided Russians with a bounty of riches besides copper: gold, platinum, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, aquamarine, topaz, even chameleonlike alexandrite. The Urals held other treasures, too, namely fossils.

Karpinsky may have picked up tips from the copper-mining field from his father, but didn't have many years to do that; his father died when Alexander was 11 years old.

Alexander subsequently attended the Saint Pe