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WILHELM JUNKER (1840-1892)

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Originally appearing in Volume V15, Page 560 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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WILHELM

JUNKER (1840-1892)  , German explorer of Africa, was born at Moscow on the 6th of
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April 1840 . He studied
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medicine at Dorpat,
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Gottingen, Berlin and Prague, but did not practise for long . After a series of short journeys to Iceland,
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Tunis and
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Lower
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Egypt, he remained almost continuously in eastern
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Equatorial Africa from 1875 to 1886, making first
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Khartum and afterwards Lado the
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base of his expeditions, Junker was a leisurely traveller and a careful observer; his main
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object was to study the peoples with whom he came into contact, and to collect specimens of
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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
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work of high merit . An
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English
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translation by A . H . Keane was published in 1890-1892 . Perhaps the greatest service he rendered to
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geographical science was his investigation of the Nile-
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Congo
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watershed, when he successfully combated Georg Schweinfurth's hydrographical theories and established the identity of the Welle and
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Ubangi . The Mahdist rising prevented his return to
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Europe through the Sudan, as he had planned to do, in 1884, and an expedition, fitted out in 1885 by his
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brother in St
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Petersburg, failed to reach him . Junker then determined to go south . Leaving
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Wadelai on the 2nd of
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January 1886 he travelled by way of
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Uganda and Tabora and reached
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Zanzibar in December 1886 . In 1887 he received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society . As an explorer Dunker is entitled to high rank, his ethnographical observations in the Niam-Niam (Azandeh) country being especially valuable .

He died at St Petersburg on the 13th of

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February 1892 . See the
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biographical
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notice by E . G . Ravenstein in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1892), pp . 185-187 .

End of Article: WILHELM JUNKER (1840-1892)
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