Swedish explorer (1716?1784)
Carl Gustaf Ekeberg
(10 June 1716 ? 4 April 1784) was a Swedish physician, chemist and explorer. He made several voyages to the
East Indies
and
China
as a sea captain. He brought back reports of the
tea
tree and wrote a number of books.
[1]
Biography
[
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]
Ekeberg was born at
Djursholm
in
Uppland
, Sweden. He was the son of Gustaf Ekeberg and Catharina Ebba Fast. He was a student at
Uppsala University
for three years (1726?1729); pharmacy student at
Vasteras
(1730?1736); provisor in the pharmacy at
Turku
(1737?1738).
Trained as a pharmacist and chemist, Ekeberg started his career as a ship's doctor, and became an expert navigator. Between 1742 and 1778 he made ten trips to
India
and
China
, becoming a captain in 1750 for the
Swedish East India Company
. He brought back numerous natural history specimens from his voyages for
Carl Linnaeus
, with whom he had a close friendship.
[2]
Swedish ships from 1750 avoided calling at
Cape Town
, preferring to reprovision in
Madagascar
and
St. Helena
. Ekeberg though, was on good terms with the Cape governor,
Rijk Tulbagh
, and called on him when visiting the Cape. He was an excellent cartographer, compiling good maps of the coastlines along which he sailed, publishing them in his book
Ostindisk Resa 1770-71
(Stockholm 1773).
[3]
Ekeberg was also responsible for having
Anders Erikson Sparrman
, whom he had met on a voyage to
Canton
in 1765, sent to the Cape in 1772 to take up a tutoring post.
[4]
He was elected a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
in 1761. He was elected a Fellow of the
Swedish Academy of Science
in Stockholm and a Knight of the
Order of Vasa
in 1777.
In 1779, he was honoured by the naming of a
genera
of plants from Africa,
Ekebergia
,
[5]
which contains 4 species of plant.
[6]
Personal life
[
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]
In 1744, he married Hedvig Erlant (1719-1809). At the beginning of the 1760s, Ekeberg purchased three farms which he brought together to form Altomta gard in the parish of Tensta.
He died during 1784 at Altomta. He was buried at
Tensta Church
(
Tensta kyrka
) in
Uppsala County
, Sweden.
[7]
[8]
[9]
Selected works
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]
- Voyages aux Grandes-Indes dans les annees 1770 et 1771
(
Ostindisk Resa 1770-71
),
Stockholm
, 1773
- Moyen facile d'inoculer la petite verole, ecrit qui popularisa la pratique de l'inoculation
References
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]
Further reading
[
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]
External links
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]
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