Paul Du Chaillu
Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (born around July 31, 1831; died April 29, 1903) was a French‑American explorer, zoologist, and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s for proving that gorillas live in Africa and later for describing the Pygmy peoples of central Africa. He also studied the prehistory of Scandinavia.
There is disagreement about his exact birth year and place. Some sources say 1831, others 1835 or 1839. Birthplaces are listed as Paris, New Orleans, or Réunion. He sometimes spoke of the United States as his country by adoption and France as his homeland.
As a youth he traveled with his father, a French trader, to West Africa and learned about the region. He moved to the United States in 1852. In 1855 the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia sent him on an African expedition. From 1856 to 1859 he explored near the equator, especially the Gabon delta. He saw gorillas, collected specimens, and was the first known white European to study them in the wild. He published his observations in 1861.
From 1863 to 1865 he led another expedition and confirmed the existence of a pygmy people living in the forests. He wrote about their customs and traded gorilla skulls and other items with European museums.
Du Chaillu published many works. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861) and A Journey to Ashango-land (1867) described his travels and the people he met. He described new animal species and collected many bird specimens, sending gorilla specimens to the Natural History Museum in London.
Later he studied northern Europe. After visiting Norway in 1871, he wrote The Land of the Midnight Sun (1881) and The Viking Age (1889), which explored Norse history and culture.
Du Chaillu died in St. Petersburg, Russia, during a research trip. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 15:58 (CET).