PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: exploration
Italian explorer
Christopher Columbus was a 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...
British naturalist
Charles Darwin was an 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...
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...
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...
Scottish physician, missionary, and explorer
David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, missionary, and explorer who exercised a formative influence on Western attitudes toward Africa. Livingstone grew up in a distinctively Scottish family environment...
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 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...
British naturalist
Alfred Russel Wallace was a 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...
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...
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...
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...
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),...
Spanish explorer
Francisco Pizarro was a Spanish conqueror of the Inca empire and founder of the city of Lima in Peru. Like other Spanish conquistadors of the early 16th century, Pizarro operated within a broader context...
British American 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...
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...
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...
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, 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...
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...
British adventurer and writer
Sir Ranulph Fiennes is a British adventurer, pioneering polar explorer, and writer, who, among his many exploits, in 1979–82 led the first north-south surface circumnavigation of the world (i.e., along...
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 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...
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 botanist
Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia or Ynes Mexia in short, was a Mexican-American botanical collector and explorer whose discoveries helped to clarify and complete botanical records. Mexia was born to the...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
Shoshone interpreter
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...
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...
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...
Moroccan enslaved person
Estéban de Dorantes was an enslaved Moroccan man who was a member of the Narváez expedition to the Gulf Coast and later participated in the Spanish exploration of the American Southwest in the 1530s. He...
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,...
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...
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 botanist and explorer
Jeanne Baret was a French botanist and explorer, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Disguised as a man aboard a French naval vessel, she collected samples of more than 6,000 plant specimens from...
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....
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...
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...
American adventurer
Christopher McCandless was an American adventurer who died from starvation and possibly poisoning, at age 24, while camping alone on a remote trail in Alaska. His death made him a figure of controversy,...
British explorer and mountaineer
George Mallory was a 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...
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