Paweł Edmund Strzelecki
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Paweł Edmund Strzelecki (July 20 1797 - October 6 1873), known as Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki in the United Kingdom, was a Polish nobleman, explorer and geologist.
Born in Głuszyna near Poznań in Poland as the third child of a struggling landowner of nobility, Strzelecki was educated in Warsaw and then he lived in Kraków. After the national uprising against tsarist Russia in 1830, he was forced to emigrate to London. His explorations and voyages gained him great popularity abroad. He visited North and South America, Cuba, Tahiti and New Zealand.
In 1838 he travelled to Australia, where at the request of George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, he made a geological and mineralogical survey of the Gippsland region of eastern Victoria, where he made many discoveries. The Strzelecki Ranges in Gippsland are named in his honour. Later, in 1839 he set out on an expedition into the Australian Alps and explored the Snowy Mountains with James Macarthur. In 1840 he climbed the highest peak in Australia and named it Mount Kosciuszko, to honour Tadeusz Kosciuszko, one of the national heroes of Poland. In Australia his surname and things named after him are pronounced "Strez-lecky."
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography he was the first person to discover gold in Australia, but Governor Gipps feared the effects of gold discovery on the colony and persuaded Strzelecki to keep it secret.
He moved back to London in 1849 where he was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and a member of the Royal Society. He gained widespread recognition as an explorer as well as a philanthropist. He helped impoverished Irish families to seek new lives in Australia. He was also active in helping injured soldiers during the Crimean War (being personally acquainted with Florence Nightingale).
He received:
- an honorary degree from the University of Oxford
- the Order of St. Michael and St. George
- Knight Companion of the Bath
- Physical Description of New South Wales. Accompanied by a Geological Map, Sections and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains (London, 1845).
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