Polar explorer Vasily Pronchishchev is known as a collector of Russian lands. He participated in the Great Northern Expedition under the leadership of Vitus Bering and explored vast territories that later became known as Taymyr and the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago.

Vasily Pronchishchev was born in 1702 in the ancestral estate of Bogimovo near Tarusa, in the Kaluga province, and was the fifth of six sons. At the age of 13, he entered the Moscow School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences, and a year later transferred to the Saint Petersburg Naval Academy. There he studied alongside Semyon Chelyuskin and the Laptev brothers, who also made significant contributions to Russian science.

After graduating from the academy, Pronchishchev served in the Baltic Fleet and participated in Peter the First's Persian campaign on the Caspian Sea. In 1733, he was included in the Second Kamchatka Expedition under Bering's command. Vasily was tasked with leading the Lena-Yenisei detachment to explore the coast west of the mouth of the Lena River.

Pronchishchev's detachment mapped 400 kilometers of the eastern coast of Taymyr and part of the Laptev Sea shore from the Faddey Bay to the Lena Delta, as well as a bay with the same name and the northern mountain system of Russia, Byranga. Thanks to his explorations, the archipelagos of Peter and Samuel were discovered, now known as the Islands of Komsomolskaya Pravda. His wife, Tatyana, accompanied him on the expedition, becoming the first female polar traveler.

In the summer of 1736, off the coast of Khatanga Bay, the crew of the double-ender "Yakutsk" became trapped in ice. Pronchishchev decided to winter there and set out on a yawl to scout a route. What happened next is unknown. From the ship's log, preserved thanks to navigator Chelyuskin, it follows that Vasily broke his leg but returned to the ship, where he soon died. It was initially believed that scurvy was the cause of death.

Only in the 20th century, when polar explorers led by Dmitry Shparo uncovered Pronchishchev's graves, was it revealed that Vasily died from a fat embolism caused by a severe fracture. Two weeks after his death, Tatyana also passed away. They were buried on a high hill near Ust-Olenek, where the river flows into the Arctic Ocean. The graves were maintained by exiles and subsequent expeditions. During the Soviet era, monuments began to be erected, and the last memorial complex was built at the initiative of Dmitry Shparo.