Emil Holub

Emil Holub (born October 7, 1847, Holice, Bohemia—died February 21, 1902, Vienna) was a naturalist who travelled extensively in south central Africa gathering varied and valuable natural history collections that he distributed to museums and schools throughout Europe. In 1872 he went to South Africa, where he practiced as a surgeon at the Kimberley diamond fields. Undertaking expeditions to the northern Transvaal, Mashonaland (eastern Rhodesia) and through Bechuanaland to Victoria Falls, he collected the specimens that he took back to Europe in 1879. Returning to South Africa with his wife in 1883, he planned to cross the continent from Cape Town to Egypt. In June 1886 his party passed north of the Zambezi River and explored the region, then almost unknown, of present-day Zambia between the river and its Kafue tributary. North of the Kafue his camp came under attack, and Holub was forced to retrace his steps. He returned to Austria in 1887 with a collection of some 13,000 items of great scientific interest. His writings include Sieben Jahre in Süd-Afrika . . ., 1872–79 (1881; Seven Years in South Africa, 1881) and Reisen, 1883–87 (1890; “Travels, 1883–87”).