Georg Forster
Johann Georg Adam Forster
Naturalist and Travel Writer · 1754–1794
Who is Georg Forster?
Georg Forster was a German-Polish naturalist, ethnologist, and travel writer who, as a teenager, accompanied his father Johann Reinhold Forster as the official naturalist and illustrator on James Cook's second voyage (1772-1775) aboard HMS Resolution. He was present at Possession Bay on South Georgia on 17 January 1775 when Cook formally claimed the island for Britain, and his own written account of the ceremony survives as an independent eyewitness record alongside Cook's official journal. After the voyage, Forster published A Voyage Round the World (1777), which he wrote and issued in English before his father's rival account appeared, making it one of the earliest published eyewitness descriptions of South Georgia's landscape and wildlife available to the public. The book was praised for its vivid, scientifically observant prose and helped establish Forster's reputation as a natural historian and one of the founders of modern travel writing. He went on to a career as a scientist, librarian, and revolutionary political writer in Europe, notably becoming a leading figure of the short-lived Mainz Republic in 1793, and died in Paris in 1794.
Sources: Georg Forster, A Voyage Round the World (London, 1777) · South Georgia Museum, "250 Years of Discovery: Captain Cook's Antarctic Voyage" (sgmuseum.gs)