1804-1865

German-British Naturalist and Explorer

German-born naturalist Robert Hermann Schomburgk explored the interior of Guyana for Britain's Royal Geographical Society between 1835 and 1939, mapping rivers and other geographical features and collecting hundreds of botanical, zoological, and geological specimens for study. In 1841, Schomburgk was commissioned by the British government to return to South America to explore, survey, and establish boundaries along the Guyana-Venezuela frontier. The resulting "Schomburgk Line" was significant in the final boundary settlements of the 1890s.

On June 5, 1804, Schomburgk was born the son of a minister in the Prussian Saxony town of Freiburg. In the late 1820s, after receiving a Prussian education which included lessons in geology and the natural sciences, Schomburgk moved to the United States, where he settle in Richmond, Virginia, as a tobacco merchant. When a fire destroyed his tobacco business in 1830, his early love for botany and natural...