Studied at the Academy of Arts and in the Shliakhta Infantry Corps. Worked in the Geography Department of the Academcy of Sciences 1780-1785 and then in the Geography Department of the Military-Topographical Depo and the Ministry of Education. He taught at the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg.
Vil'brekht produced the second atlas of all Russia in the early 1790s and was a key contributor to the important "Detailed Map of the Russian Empire and Surrounding Territories" published in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
He became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1814. [Source]