Johann Wilhelm Helfer

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Johann Wilhelm Helfer (born February 5, 1810 in Prague , † January 30, 1840 on the Andamans ) was a Bohemian medic and explorer .

Life

Helfer came from a wealthy Prague family. He first attended high school in Prague and then began studying medicine. He studied at the universities of Prague , Vienna and Padua . In 1832 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD . On a subsequent trip to Italy he met Pauline Freiin Des Granges , whom he married a little later. Together they contested the expeditions in the period that followed . They first settled in Smyrna . Helfer worked there as a general practitioner. He was robbed during an expedition in 1835 and came to Baghdad penniless . There he was put through the English consul to Colonel Chesney , who took him on his Euphrates expedition as a doctor and naturalist. Further trips followed under Chesney via Syria and Persia to Calcutta . During this time he kept in contact with the German geographer Carl Ritter , who used the information provided by Helfer for his volumes 10 and 11 of his geography .

Helfer attracted the attention of the British government through lectures he gave to the Asiatic Society of Bengal . He then got a job as a naturalist with the British East India Company . In 1837/1838 he sailed the coasts of India and Burma and in 1840 he started the journey to the Andaman Islands. There he tried to make contact with the indigenous people. These attempts failed and he was finally killed there by a resident with a poison arrow .

aftermath

Due to his early death, he was no longer able to publish many of his findings himself. Some findings were published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society , others in the two volumes of Johann Wilhelm Helfer's Travels in the Middle East and India , which his wife published after his death. In addition, the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society in Vienna printed Dr. Johann Wilhelm Helfer's printed and unprinted writings on the Tenasserim Provinces, the Mergui Archipelago and the Andaman Islands . The society also got his scientific legacy.

The Dr. Helfer's natural history collections comprised 2600 different natural history objects in 55,259 specimens, including 500 species that were unknown to science until then. His insect collection was also extensive . It contained 49,164 insects in around 1,858 species, including 47,833 beetles in 1,700 species. Dr. Helfer's herbarium went to the Bohemian Museum in Prague in 1844 . It contained 6086 plants in 574 species.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Constantin von Wurzbach : Nostitz, Pauline Gräfin . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 20th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1869, p. 396 ( digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Helper, Johann Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physician and research traveler
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague , Bohemia , Austrian Empire
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1840
Place of death Andaman Islands