Robert Kennicott

Robert Kennicott ( born November 13, 1835 in New Orleans, † May 13, 1866 in Alaska) was an American naturalist.

Life

Kennicott was born in New Orleans and grew up in Chicago. Since 1853 he worked for Spencer Fullerton Baird at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where he was a leading member of the Megatherium Club. In April 1859 he went to collect natural history specimens on an expedition in the subarctic boreal forests in the north- western Canada, today's Mackenzie and Yukon River valleys and in the further north arctic tundra. Kennicott became friends with fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company in this area and encouraged them to collect natural history pieces and objects of Aboriginal (Inuit and Métis ) and send to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. In 1862 he returned himself back to Washington.

In 1865, the Western Union Telegraph Expedition launched to find a possible communication route between North America and Russia on the Bering Sea. Kennicott was selected as a scientist for this; among the company of scholars who assisted him, William Healey Dall and also Ottfried of Bendeleben were.

The expedition met in April in San Francisco, but disputes between the expedition leaders meant that there were few results. The company went to the north to Vancouver, where Kennicott ill. After his recovery, he moved again to the north to Alaska. He died of a heart attack while he was walking up the Yukon River.

Were named after him the Kennicott Glacier, the Kennicott Valley, the Kennicott River and the mining town of Kennicott.