Karl Maksimovich Baer is a world-famous scientist, and for Russia - the largest biologist of the first half of the XIX century. He was of German origin, but was born in Russia and was a Russian citizen from birth. Of the 84 years he lived, he spent only 20 years abroad, in Germany, and the remaining 64 years he worked in Russia, where for 48 years he was an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and was in the Russian public service. Baer surprises with the diversity and depth of his scientific work. Academician V. I. Vernadsky, who highly revered Baer's memory, calls him "the great sage." Baer is best known as an outstanding embryologist, a carrier of new morphological ideas. He also left a major mark in the history of a number of related sciences - as an outstanding geographer-traveler, a talented anthropologist, the founder of this scientific discipline in Russia, as a researcher of the productive forces of Russia, finally as an outstanding teacher who bequeathed us a number of valuable thoughts about the construction of secondary and higher schools.