A. G. Nathorst

Alfred Gabriel Nathorst (7 November 1850 – 20 January 1921) was a Swedish Arctic explorer, geologist, and palaeobotanist. He travelled to Spitzbergen, Svalbard and Greenland where he took an interest in the Arctic floras from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods.

Life

Nathorst was born in Väderbrunn in Sweden to Hjalmar Otto and Maria Charlotta born Georgii, who had moved to Alnarp where Hjalmar served as a professor at the institute of agriculture. Nathorst studied at Malmö before joining the University of Lund in 1868. He spent some time in the University of Uppsala and returned to Lund for his doctorate in 1874. His interest in botany were influenced by N. P. Angelin. Nathorst's interest in geology was awakened by Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and, at the age of 21, Nathorst visited Lyell in England in 1872.

Nathorst was employed at the Geological Survey of Sweden in 1873–84. He was then appointed professor, by royal decree on the 5 December 1884, and was simultaneously made curator of the new "Department of Archegoniates and Fossil Plants" at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. He remained at this post until his retirement in 1917.

Nathorst visited Spitsbergen in 1870 and in 1882–83 he participated in the Second Dickson expedition ("Den andra Dicksonska Expeditionen till Grönland") led by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. He led an expedition on the ship Antarctic to Bear Island and Svalbard including the isolated Kong Karls Land in 1898. The following year (1899), Nathorst led an expedition to Greenland. This second expedition had the dual purpose of geographical mapping and of searching for survivors of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. The Andreé expedition was not found, however Nathorst found and mapped the Antarctic Sound, a fjord branch connecting Kaiser Franz Joseph Fjord to the north with the head of King Oscar Fjord to the south. The two expeditions are described in two volumes Två somrar i Norra Ishavet (in Swedish).