Scherer, Jean-Benoît, b 1 September 1741 in Strasbourg, France, d 16 October 1824 in Barr, Alsace. Historian, geographer, and economist. After studying at Strasbourg, Jena, and Leipzig universities, he served in the Russian civil service and then at the French embassy in Saint Petersburg. In 1808–24 he taught French literature and Russian history at Tübingen University. He translated the Primary Chronicle with extensive annotations (1774) and wrote Histoire raisonnée du commerce de la Russie (1788), which contained a chapter on Ukraine, and the two-volume Annales de la Petite-Russie ou Histoire des Cosaques-Saporogues et des Cosaques de l’Ukraine ou de la Petite-Russie (1788), one of the earliest works in Western Europe on Ukrainian history and geography, which influenced the author of Istoriia Rusov.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]