Gustav Nachtigal

Gustav Nachtigal (1834 to 1885) was a German military surgeon and explorer of Central and West Africa, born in Eichstedt, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He studied medicine at Halle, Würzburg and Greifswald and practiced for several years as a military surgeon in Cologne before lung disease took him to Algeria in 1862 and then Tunis, where he studied Arabic. Between 1869 and 1875 he travelled into Central Africa, carrying gifts from King Wilhelm I of Prussia to the ruler of Bornu, visiting Tibesti and Borku, regions of the central Sahara not previously known to Europeans, and emerging at Khartoum after being given up as lost. In 1882 he received the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal. He later served as German consul-general for Tunisia and as special commissioner for West Africa, establishing Togoland and Kamerun as Germany's first colonial possessions, and died at sea in 1885. He took a particular interest in ethnography and tropical medicine.