Sven Hedin

Sven Anders Hedin was born on 19 February 1865 in Sweden and spent four decades turning blank spaces on maps into documented geography. Between the late 1880s and early 1900s, he traveled through Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, Kyrgyz lands, the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan - a route he chronicled in Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole). His four Central Asian expeditions delivered the specifics: he located the sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers, mapped the shifting boundaries of Lop Nur, and traced remnants of the Great Wall and ancient cities buried in the Tarim Basin's deserts. He photographed, drew, and wrote his own accounts. His Central Asia Atlas, published after his death on 26 November 1952, closed the ledger on a life spent measuring the unmeasured.