PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: exploration
British naturalist
Charles Darwin English naturalist whose scientific theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. An affable country gentleman, Darwin at first shocked religious...
Italian explorer
Christopher Columbus master navigator and admiral whose four transatlantic voyages (1492–93, 1493–96, 1498–1500, and 1502–04) opened the way for European exploration, exploitation, and colonization of...
Italian explorer
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant and adventurer who traveled from Europe to Asia in 1271–95, remaining in China for 17 of those years. His Il milione (“The Million”), known in English as the Travels...
Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese navigator and explorer who sailed under the flags of both Portugal (1505–13) and Spain (1519–21). From Spain, he sailed around South America, discovering the Strait...
German explorer and naturalist
Alexander von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer who was a major figure in the classical period of physical geography and biogeography—areas of science now included in the Earth sciences and...
Scottish explorer and missionary
David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and explorer who exercised a formative influence on Western attitudes toward Africa. Livingstone grew up in a distinctively Scottish family environment of personal...
Swedish botanist
Carolus Linnaeus was a Swedish naturalist and explorer who was the first to frame principles for defining natural genera and species of organisms and to create a uniform system for naming them (binomial...
Muslim explorer and writer
Ibn Battuta was the greatest medieval Muslim traveler and the author of one of the most famous travel books, the Riḥlah (Travels). His great work describes his extensive travels covering some 75,000 miles...
English admiral
Sir Francis Drake was an English admiral who circumnavigated the globe (1577–80) and was the most renowned seaman of the Elizabethan Age. Born on the Crowndale estate of Lord Francis Russell, 2nd earl...
British naturalist
Alfred Russel Wallace British humanist, naturalist, geographer, and social critic. He became a public figure in England during the second half of the 19th century, known for his courageous views on scientific,...
British scholar and explorer
Sir Richard Burton was an English scholar-explorer and Orientalist who was the first European to discover Lake Tanganyika and to penetrate hitherto-forbidden Muslim cities. He published 43 volumes on his...
Spanish conquistador
Hernán Cortés was a Spanish conquistador who overthrew the Aztec empire (1519–21) and won Mexico for the crown of Spain. Cortés was the son of Martín Cortés de Monroy and of Doña Catalina Pizarro Altamarino—names...
prince of Portugal
Henry the Navigator was a Portuguese prince noted for his patronage of voyages of discovery among the Madeira Islands and along the western coast of Africa. The epithet Navigator, applied to him by the...
British naval officer
James Cook was a British naval captain, navigator, and explorer who sailed the seaways and coasts of Canada (1759 and 1763–67) and conducted three expeditions to the Pacific Ocean (1768–71, 1772–75, and1776–79),...
British explorer
Henry Morton Stanley was a British American explorer of central Africa, famous for his rescue of the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone and for his discoveries in and development of the...
Portuguese navigator
Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese navigator whose voyages to India (1497–99, 1502–03, 1524) opened up the sea route from western Europe to the East by way of the Cape of Good Hope. The famed bridge named...
Norwegian explorer and scientist
Fridtjof Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, oceanographer, statesman, and humanitarian who led a number of expeditions to the Arctic (1888, 1893, 1895–96) and oceanographic expeditions in the North Atlantic...
American explorer
Richard E. Byrd was a U.S. naval officer, pioneer aviator, and polar explorer best known for his explorations of Antarctica using airplanes and other modern technical resources. After graduating from the...
French explorer
René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle was a French explorer in North America who led an expedition down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and claimed all the region watered by the Mississippi and its...
Italian navigator
Amerigo Vespucci was a merchant and explorer-navigator who took part in early voyages to the New World (1499–1500 and 1501–02) and occupied the influential post of piloto mayor (“master navigator”) in...
American explorer, geologist, and ethnologist
John Wesley Powell was an American explorer, geologist, and ethnologist, best known for his exploration of the upper portion of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Powell was the fourth child of English...
English navigator and explorer
Henry Hudson was an English navigator and explorer who, sailing three times for the English (1607, 1608, 1610–11) and once for the Dutch (1609), tried to discover a short route from Europe to Asia through...
English explorer
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English adventurer and writer, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who knighted him in 1585. Accused of treason by Elizabeth’s successor, James I, he was imprisoned in the Tower...
Spanish explorer
Francisco Pizarro was a Spanish conqueror of the Inca empire and founder of the city of Lima. Pizarro was the illegitimate son of Captain Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisca González, a young girl of humble...
American explorer, military officer, and politician
John C. Frémont was an American military officer and an early explorer and mapmaker of the American West, who was one of the principal figures in opening up that region to settlement and was instrumental...
Native American explorer
Sacagawea was a Shoshone Indian woman who, as an interpreter, traveled thousands of wilderness miles with the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06), from the Mandan-Hidatsa villages in the Dakotas to the...
British scientist
Francis Galton was an English explorer, anthropologist, and eugenicist known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence. He was knighted in 1909. Galton’s family life was happy, and he gratefully...
American explorer
William Clark was an American frontiersman who won fame as an explorer by sharing with Meriwether Lewis the leadership of their epic expedition to the Pacific Northwest (1804–06). He later played an essential...
Spanish explorer
Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish conquistador and explorer, who was head of the first stable settlement on the South American continent (1511) and who was the first European to sight the eastern shore...
Spanish explorer
Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who participated in the conquests of Central America and Peru and, in the course of exploring what was to become the southeastern United States,...
British explorer
John Smith was an English explorer and early leader of the Jamestown Colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Smith played an equally important role as a cartographer and a prolific...
Prussian-Estonian embryologist
Karl Ernst von Baer was a Prussian-Estonian embryologist who discovered the mammalian ovum and the notochord and established the new science of comparative embryology alongside comparative anatomy. He...
Arab geographer
Muḥammad al-Idrīsī was an Arab geographer and adviser to Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily. He wrote one of the greatest works of medieval geography, Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (“The...
Chinese admiral and diplomat
Zheng He was an admiral and diplomat who helped extend the maritime and commercial influence of China throughout the regions bordering the Indian Ocean. He commanded seven naval expeditions almost a century...
American explorer
Meriwether Lewis was an American explorer, who with William Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the uncharted American interior to the Pacific Northwest in 1804–06. He later served as governor...
Portuguese explorer
Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese navigator and explorer who led the first European expedition to round the Cape of Good Hope (1488), opening the sea route to Asia via the Atlantic and Indian oceans. He...
American geologist and mineralogist
James D. Dana was an American geologist, mineralogist, and naturalist who, in explorations of the South Pacific, the U.S. Northwest, Europe, and elsewhere, made important studies of mountain building,...
Portuguese explorer
Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese navigator who is generally credited as the first European to reach Brazil (April 22, 1500). (The Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who had been on Christopher...
French explorer
Jacques Cartier was a French mariner whose explorations of the Canadian coast and the St. Lawrence River (1534, 1535, 1541–42) laid the basis for later French claims to North America (see New France)....
French explorer
Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer, acknowledged founder of the city of Quebec (1608), and consolidator of the French colonies in the New World. He was the first known European to sight the lake...
English explorer
Sir John Franklin was an English rear admiral and explorer who led an ill-fated expedition (1845) in search of the Northwest Passage, a Canadian Arctic waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans....
English naturalist
John Ray was a leading 17th-century English naturalist and botanist who contributed significantly to progress in taxonomy. His enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of species as the ultimate...
Dutch explorer and navigator
Abel Tasman was the greatest of the Dutch navigators and explorers, who was the first European to sight Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga, and the Fiji Islands. On his first voyage (1642–43) in the service...
Buddhist monk
Xuanzang was a Buddhist monk and Chinese pilgrim to India who translated the sacred scriptures of Buddhism from Sanskrit into Chinese and founded in China the Buddhist Consciousness Only school. His fame...
Portuguese explorer
Pêro da Covilhã was an early Portuguese explorer of Africa, who established relations between Portugal and Ethiopia. As a boy, Pêro served the duke of Medina-Sidonia in Sevilla (Seville) for six or seven...
Italian explorer
John Cabot was a navigator and explorer who by his voyages in 1497 and 1498 helped lay the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada. The exact details of his life and of his voyages are still subjects...
French naval officer
Francis Garnier was a French naval officer, colonial administrator, and explorer. Garnier, the son of an army officer, overcame parental opposition to enter the naval school at Brest in 1856. Upon completion...
British botanist
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was an English botanist noted for his botanical travels and studies and for his encouragement of Charles Darwin and of Darwin’s theories. The younger son of Sir William Jackson...
British explorer and mountaineer
George Mallory British explorer and mountaineer who was a leading member of early expeditions to Mount Everest. His disappearance on that mountain in 1924 became one of the most celebrated mysteries of...
British explorer
Wilfred Thesiger British soldier and travel writer who was a colonial explorer in the tradition of Sir Richard Burton and T.E. Lawrence. His most important writings, based on his travels to remote areas...
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