Ludwig Kohl-Larsen

Ludwig Kohl-Larsen, born Ludwig Kohl, was a German physician, amateur anthropologist and explorer, born in Landau in der Pfalz on 5 April 1884 and died near Lake Constance on 12 November 1969. In 1911 he sailed as ship's doctor with Wilhelm Filchner to Antarctica, and at South Georgia he met his wife, the daughter of the whaling station founder Carl Anton Larsen. During the First World War he worked as a government doctor in Micronesia, and in 1928 he led the first scientific expedition to South Georgia. In 1938 and 1939 he found fossils at Laetoli in Tanganyika that were later identified as Australopithecus afarensis. He joined the Nazi Party in 1931, his racial theories were at odds with most anthropology of his day, and contemporary East Africanists do not rate his scholarship highly.