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Anders Sparrman (27 February 1748 – 9 August 1820) was a Swedishnaturalist,abolitionist and anapostle of Carl Linnaeus.
Born inTensta,Uppland, Sparrman was the son of a clergyman. At the age of nine he enrolled atUppsala University, beginning medical studies at fourteen and becoming one of the outstanding pupils ofLinnaeus. In 1765 he went on a voyage to China as ship's doctor, returning two years later and describing the animals and plants he had encountered. On this voyage he metCarl Gustaf Ekeberg.
He sailed for theCape of Good Hope in January 1772 to do natural history research, supporting himself by tutoring children.[1] WhenJames Cook arrived there later in the year at the start of his second voyage, Sparrman was taken on as assistant naturalist toJohann andGeorg Forster. After the voyage he returned toCape Town in July 1775 and practiced medicine, earning enough to finance a journey into the interior. He was guided by Daniel Ferdinand Immelman, the young frontiersman who had previously guided the Swedish botanistCarl Peter Thunberg. Daniel and Sparrman reached theGreat Fish River and returned in April 1776.[2]
In 1776 Sparrman returned to Sweden, where he had been awarded an honorary doctorate in his absence. He was also elected a member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1777. He was appointed keeper of the natural historical collections of the Academy of Sciences in 1780, Professor of natural history and pharmacology in 1781 and assessor of the Collegium Medicum in 1790. In 1790 he was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[3] In 1787 he took part in an expedition to West Africa, but this was not successful.
Sparrman published several works, the best known of which is his account of his travels in South Africa and with Cook, published in English asA voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Antarctic polar circle, and round the world: But chiefly into the country of the Hottentots and Caffres, from the year 1772 to 1776 (1789).[2] He also published aCatalogue of the Museum Carlsonianum (1786–89), in which he described many of the specimens he had collected in South Africa and the South Pacific, some of which were new to science. He published anOrnithology of Sweden in 1806.[4]
Theasteroid16646 Sparrman bears his name. In New Zealand, he is commemorated byMount Sparrman.[5] The Swedish novelistPer Wästberg has written abiographical novel about Sparrman which was published in English in 2010, under the title asThe Journey of Anders Sparrman. Anders Erikson Sparrman is denoted by theauthor abbreviationSparrm. whenciting abotanical name.[6]
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