Born February 19, 1865,
Stockholm, Sweden
Died November 26, 1952

Sven Anders Hedin was born into a prominent family in Stockholm, Sweden. While in high school he became interested in geography and mapmaking. After showing an exceptional talent for mapmaking, he was asked to produce a map for the Swedish Geographical Society to illustrate a lecture on the expeditions of Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky (see entry). Another famous explorer, the Arctic adventurer Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, complimented Hedin on his mapmaking skills.

Early voyages

At the age of 20 Hedin moved to Baku—the capital city of present-day Azerbaijan, located on the Caspian Sea—where he served for eight months as a tutor to the son of a Swedish engineer working in the region’s oil fields. During that time he studied Farsi (the language of Iran, which was then known as Persia) and Turkish. Using...