Russian explorer, ethnologist, anthropologist and biologist
1846 CE
to 1888 CE
Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay (1846–1888) is a Russian explorer, ethnologist, anthropologist and biologist who becomes famous as the first scientist to settle among and study people who had never seen a white man.
Miklouho-Maclay spends the major part of his life traveling and conducts scientific research in the Middle East, Australia, New Guinea, Melanesia and Polynesia.
Australia, though, becomes his adopted country and Sydney the home town of his family.
He becomes a prominent figure of nineteenth century Australian science and becomes involved in significant issues of Australian and New Guinea history.
Writing letters to Australian papers, Miklouho-Maclay expresses his opposition to the labor and slave trade ("blackbirding") in Australia, New Caledonia and the Pacific, as well as his opposition to the British and German colonial expansion in New Guinea.
While in Australia, he builds the first biological research station in the Southern Hemisphere, is elected to the Linnean Society of New South Wales, is instrumental in establishing the Australasian Biological Association, stays at the elite Australian Club, becomes the intimate of the leading amateur scientist and political figure Sir William Macleay, and marries the daughter of the Premier of New South Wales.
His three grandsons all contribute to the public life of Australia.
One of the earliest followers of Charles Darwin, Miklouho-Maclay is also remembered today as a humanist scholar who, on the basis of his comparative anatomical research, was one of the first anthropologists to refute the prevailing view that the different 'races' of mankind belonged to different species.
