Wilhelm Junker

Wilhelm Junker (; ) was a Russian explorer of Africa. Junker was of German descent.

Career Born in Moscow, he studied medicine at the Imperial University of Dorpat, Göttingen, Berlin and Prague, but did not practise for long. After a series of short journeys to Iceland (1869), Western Africa (1873), Tunis (1874) and Lower Egypt (1875), he remained almost continuously in eastern Equatorial Africa from 1875 to 1886, making first Khartoum and afterwards Lado the base of his expeditions.

Junker was a leisurely traveller and a careful observer; his main object was to study the peoples with whom he came into contact, and to collect specimens of plants and animals, and the result of his investigations in these particulars is given in his Reisen in Afrika (3 vols., Vienna, 1889–1891), a work of high merit. An English translation by A. H. Keane, in three volumes, was published in 1890–1892.