Robert Christian Avé-Lallemant

Robert Christian Barthold Avé-Lallemant was a German medical doctor and explorer, born in Lübeck on 25 July 1812 and died on 10 October 1884. He earned his medical doctorate at the University of Kiel and moved to Brazil in 1836, where he became director of a sanatorium for yellow fever patients in Rio de Janeiro. He returned to Germany in 1855 and joined the Austrian Novara expedition as ship's doctor on a special recommendation from Alexander von Humboldt, but left the expedition at Rio de Janeiro in 1857. He worked as a physician at the Fremdenhospital there and then spent about two years exploring the interior of Brazil with the support of Emperor Pedro II. In 1859 he went back to Lübeck, where he practised medicine and wrote many books, including accounts of journeys through southern and northern Brazil and a 1882 biography of the polymath Joachim Jungius. His brothers were the criminologist Friedrich Christian Benedict Avé-Lallemant and the music critic Theodor Avé-Lallemant.