David Thompson was an English-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and map-maker, known to some native peoples as "Koo - Koo - Sint" or "the Stargazer". Over his career he mapped over 3.9 million square kilometres of North America and for this ha...

Robert Brown, Scottish botanist and botanical explorer. In 1801 he went as a naturalist on one of Matthew Flinders's expeditions to Australia, returning (1805) to England with valuable collections. In his Prodromus florae Novae Hollandiae e...

Meriwether Lewis was an American explorer, soldier, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark, whose mission was to explore the...

Bernardino Drovetti was an Italian diplomat, lawyer, explorer and antiquarian, appointed by Napoleon as French consul to Egypt at a time when the country and its antiquities were being opened rapidly to European knowledge and acquisition. H...

Giovanni Battista Belzoni — Italian showman, engineer and explorer of Egyptian antiquities. His quest for adventure brought him to England in 1803 and by means of his gigantic physique, earned a living in circuses in England, Spain and Port...

Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman, fur trapper, fur trader, hunter, and explorer. Born in Pennsylvania to Scotch-Irish parents, Glass became an explorer of the watershed of the Upper Missouri River, in present-day Montana, North Dakot...

Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller and orientalist. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis. He is best known for rediscovering the ruins of the city of Petra in Jordan. During h...

General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to ru...

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a...

Sacagawea, also Sakakawea or Sacajawea, was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition achieve each of its chartered mission objectives exploring the Louisiana Purchase. With the expedition, between 1804 and 1806, she...

Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville was a French explorer, naval officer and rear admiral, who explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. In honour of his many valuable chartings, the D'Urville Sea...

Colonel Sir George Everest was a Welsh surveyor, geographer and Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843. Sir George was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India along the meridian arc fro...

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician, botanist, and traveler. He taught some pupils Western medicine in Japan. He achieved prominence for his study of Japanese flora and fauna, and was the father of female Japanese doc...

George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West. Following a brief career as a lawyer, Catlin produced two major collections of paintings of American Indians and pu...

Frederick Catherwood was an English artist, architect and explorer, best remembered for his meticulously detailed drawings of the ruins of the Maya civilization. He explored Mesoamerica in the mid 19th century with writer John Lloyd Stephen...