NATURE 
399 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1882 
SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES 
XIX.—ADOLF ERIK NORDENSKJOLD 
EW men have done more varied and real service for 
science than Baron Nordenskjéld, whose portrait 
we are pleased to include in our Gallery of Scientific 
Worthies. The present seems an appropriate time to do 
so, when Nordenskjéld has crowned the labours of half a 
lifetime by recounting the story of his greatest achieve- 
ment, and put the finishing touch to centuries of effort. 
Baron Nordenskjéld is known to most as the successful 
Arctic explorer and navigator, but his claims to be 
regarded as a worthy of science rest on a much wider 
basis. 
Adolf Erik Nordenskjéld was born at Helsingfors, the 
capital of Finland, on November 18, 1832, the third in 
order of seven children, four brothers and three sisters, 
all of whom, with the exception of a sister who died 
young, still survive. His parents were Nils Gustaf Nor- 
denskjéld, a well-known naturalist, chief of the mining 
department of Finland, and Margareta Sofia von Haart- 
man. The race from which Nordenskjéld sprang had 
been known for centuries for the possession of remarkable 
qualities, among which an ardent love of nature and of 
scientific research was predominant. Its founder is said 
to have been a Lieut. Nordberg, who was settled in 
Upland about the beginning of the seventeenth century 
His son, Johan Erik, born’ 1660, changed the name to 
Nordenberg. He died in 1740, leaving two sons, Anders 
Johan and Carl Frederik, both of whom, though the latter 
was only lieutenant, were elected members of the Swedish 
Academy of Sciences when it was founded in 1739. Both 
were ennobled in 1751. Carl Frederik is the common 
ancestor of the families bearing the name of Nordenskjéld 
now living in Sweden and Finland. One of his many 
remarkable sons, the third in order, Col. Adolf Gustaf 
Nordenskjéld, became owner of Frugord in Finland. 
This property, situated in a forest-crowned valley in the 
department of Nyland, is still in the possession of the 
Nordenskjélds. Here Col. Adolf Gustaf Nordenskjéld 
built a peculiar residence, the middle of which is taken 
up with a hall two stories high, round the upper part of 
which runs a broad gallery in which collections in natural 
history are arranged. His youngest son, Nils Gustaf, 
was born in 1792. After passing his examination in 
mining at the University of Upsala he was for several 
years a pupil of Berzelius, with whom he formed the 
warmest friendship, which was only broken off by death. 
Nils Gustaf, early known as a distinguished mineralogist, 
was appointed a government inspector of mines in his 
native country, and by means of liberal grants of public 
money was enabled to undertake extensive foreign tours, 
which brought him into communication with most of the 
eminent mineralogists and chemists of the day in Eng- 
land, France, and Germany. After three years of foreign 
travel he returned to Finland, and was promoted in 1824 
to be chief of the mining department, and devoted thirty 
years of restless activity to the- improvement of that im- 
portant branch of the industry of his native land. He 
travelled through Finland in all directions in the prosecu- 
VoL. xXxv.—No. 640 
tion of his untiring mineralogical and geological re- 
searches. His travels extended as far as the Ural. He 
published his views, discoveries, and experiments, in 
many scientific periodicals and in several independent 
works, and a large number of minerals discovered by 
him afford evidence of his keen research. He was made 
Councillor of State, and obtained many distinctions for 
his scientific services from the sovereign and from learned 
bodies. On February 21, 1866, he ended his active life 
at Frugord, and was laid to rest in his father’s grave. 
Adolf Erik while yet a boy was an industrious collector 
of minerals and of insects, and was permitted to accom- 
pany his father on his tours, acquiring thus early the keen 
eye of the mineralogist. After studying for some time with 
a private tutor he was sent to the gymnasium at Borgo, 
where, as at similar institutions elsewhere, there then pre- 
vailed, as he tells us in the autobiographical sketch which 
he wrote for Bejer’s “ Swedish Biographical Lexicon,” an 
almost unlimited freedom, the teachers taking no over- 
sight whatever of the pupils’ attention to their studies. 
Nordenskjéld entered the University of Helsingfors in 
1849, devoting himself chiefly to the study of chemistry, 
natural history, mathematics, physics, and above all, of 
mineralogy and geology. ‘‘ Already, before I became a 
student,’ he writes, “I had been allowed to accompany 
my father in mineralogical excursions, and had acquired 
from him skill in recognising and collecting minerals and 
in the use of the blowpipe, which he, being a pupil of 
Gahn and Berzelius, handled with a masterly skill un- 
known to most of the chemists of the present day. I 
now undertook the charge of the rich mineral collection 
at Frugord, and besides, during the vacations made ex- 
cursions to Pitkeranta, Tammela, Pargas, and others of 
Finland’s interesting mineral localities. By practice I 
thus acquired a keen and certain eye for recognising 
minerals, which has been of great service to me in the 
path of life I afterwards followed.” 
After passing his candidate examination in 1853, Nor- 
denskjéld accompanied his father on a mineralogical tour 
to Ural devoting most of his attention to Demidoff’s iron 
and copper mines at Tagilsk. Here he planned an ex- 
tensive journey through Siberia, but the breaking out of 
the Crimean war put a stop to it. 
“After my return,” says Nordenskjéld, “I continued 
to prosecute my chemical and mineralogical studies with 
zeal, and wrote as my dissertation for the degree of Licen- 
tiate a paper ‘ On the Crystalline Forms of Graphite and 
Chondrodite, which was discussed under the presidency 
of Prof. Arppe on the 28th of February, 1855. The fol- 
lowing summer I was employed on a work of somewhat 
greater extent—‘A Description of the Minerals found in 
Finland,’ which was published the same autumn. Various 
short papers in mineralogy and molecular chemistry were 
printed in Acta Societatis scientiarum Fennie@: 1 also 
published, along with Dr. E. Nylander, ‘The Mollusca of 
Finland’ (Helsingfors, 1856), as an answer to a prize 
question proposed by one of the faculty. In the interval 
I had been appointed Curator of the Mathematico-Physi- 
cal faculty, and had obtained a post at the Mining Office 
as mining engineer extraordinary, with inconsiderable 
pay, and an express understanding that no service would 
be required from me in return. A salary was also attached 
to my curatorship.”’ 
P 
