- Wilhelm Junker
Wilhelm Junker (
6 April 1840 -13 February 1892 ) was a Russian explorer ofAfrica . He was of German descent.He was born at
Moscow . He studied medicine atDorpat ,Göttingen ,Berlin andPrague , but did not practise for long. After a series of short journeys toIceland ,Tunis andLower Egypt , he remained almost continuously in eastern Equatorial Africa from 1875 to 1886, making firstKhartoum and afterwardsLado the base of his expeditions.Junker was a leisurely traveller and a careful observer; his main object was to study the peoples with whom he came into contact, and to collect specimens of plants and animals, and the result of his investigations in these particulars is given in his "Reisen in Afrika" (3 vols., Vienna, 1889-1891), a work of high merit. An English translation by
A. H. Keane was published in 1890-1892.Perhaps the greatest service he rendered to geographical science was his investigation of the
Nile -Congo watershed, when he successfully combatedGeorg Schweinfurth 's hydrographical theories and established the identity of theWelle andUbangi . TheMahdist rising prevented his return to Europe through theSudan , as he had planned to do, in 1884, and an expedition, fitted out in 1885 by his brother inSt Petersburg , failed to reach him. Junker then determined to go south. LeavingWadelai on the 2nd of January 1886 he travelled by way ofUganda andTabora and reachedZanzibar in November 1886. In 1887 he received the gold medal of theRoyal Geographical Society . As an explorer Junker is entitled to high rank, his ethnographical observations in theNiam-Niam (Azandeh ) country being especially valuable. He died at St Petersburg.See the biographical notice by E. G. Ravenstein in "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society" (1892), pp. 185-187.
References
*1911
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