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The Most Famous

EXPLORERS from Estonia

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This page contains a list of the greatest Estonian Explorers. The pantheon dataset contains 405 Explorers, 3 of which were born in Estonia. This makes Estonia the birth place of the 20th most number of Explorers behind Australia and Turkey.

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Estonian Explorers of all time. This list of famous Estonian Explorers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen

1. Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (1778 - 1852)

With an HPI of 65.86, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen is the most famous Estonian Explorer.  His biography has been translated into 54 different languages on wikipedia.

Faddey Faddeyevich Bellingshausen (German: Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin von Bellingshausen; 18 August [O.S. 9 August] 1778 – 25 January [O.S. 13 January] 1852) was a cartographer, explorer, and naval officer of the Russian Empire, who attained the rank of admiral. He participated in the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe, and subsequently became a leader of another circumnavigation expedition that discovered the continent of Antarctica. Like Otto von Kotzebue and Adam Johann von Krusenstern, Bellingshausen belonged to the cohort of prominent Baltic German navigators who helped Russia launch its naval expeditions.Bellingshausen was born in the Estonian island of Saaremaa (Ösel), in the eponymous family. He started his service in the Russian Baltic Fleet, and after distinguishing himself joined the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth in 1803–1806, serving on the merchant ship Nadezhda under the captaincy of Adam Johann von Krusenstern. After the journey, he published a collection of maps of the newly explored areas and islands of the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, he commanded several ships of the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets.As a prominent cartographer, Bellingshausen was appointed to command the Russian circumnavigation of the globe in 1819–1821, intended to explore the Southern Ocean and to find land in the proximity of the South Pole. Mikhail Lazarev prepared the expedition and was made Bellingshausen's second-in-command and the captain of the sloop Mirny, while Bellingshausen himself commanded the sloop Vostok. During this expedition, Bellingshausen and Lazarev became the first explorers to see the land of Antarctica on 27 January 1820 (New Style), disproving James Cook's contention that it was impossible to find land in the southern ice-fields. They circumnavigated the continent twice and never lost each other from view. The expedition discovered and named Peter I, Zavodovski, Leskov, Alexander, and Visokoi Islands, the Antarctic Peninsula, and made other discoveries in the tropical waters of the Pacific. Made counter admiral on his return, Bellingshausen participated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829. Promoted to vice admiral, he again served in the Baltic Fleet in the 1830s, and from 1839 he was the military governor of Kronstadt, where he died. In 1831, he published the book on his Antarctic travels, called Double Investigation of the Southern Polar Ocean and the Voyage Around the World.

Photo of Adam Johann von Krusenstern

2. Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770 - 1846)

With an HPI of 61.11, Adam Johann von Krusenstern is the 2nd most famous Estonian Explorer.  His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Adam Johann von Krusenstern (name in Russia: Ива́н Фёдорович Крузенште́рн, Ivan Fyodorovich Kruzenshtern; 10 October 1770 – 12 August 1846) was a Baltic German admiral of the Russian Empire and the explorer who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth in 1803–1806.

Photo of Eduard von Toll

3. Eduard von Toll (1858 - 1902)

With an HPI of 51.15, Eduard von Toll is the 3rd most famous Estonian Explorer.  His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Eduard Gustav Freiherr von Toll (Russian: Эдуа́рд Васи́льевич Толль, romanized: Eduárd Vasíl'evič Toll'; 14 March [O.S. 2 March] 1858 – 1902), better known in Russia as Eduard Vasilyevich Toll and often referred to as Baron von Toll, was a Russian geologist and Arctic explorer. He is most notable for leading the Russian polar expedition of 1900–1902 in search of the legendary Sannikov Land, a phantom island purported to lie off Russia's Arctic coast. During the expedition, Toll and a small party of explorers disappeared from Bennett Island, and their fate remains unknown to this day.

Pantheon has 3 people classified as explorers born between 1770 and 1858. Of these 3, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased explorers include Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, Adam Johann von Krusenstern, and Eduard von Toll.

Deceased Explorers

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Which Explorers were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 3 most globally memorable Explorers since 1700.