Sven Anders Hedin

Sven Anders Hedin (1865-1952), Swedish explorer and geographer, born in Stockholm, and educated at the universities of Uppsala, Berlin, and Halle. During his first major Asian expedition, he crossed the Pamirs, charted Lop Nur (Lake) in China, and finally arrived at Beijing. He then journeyed to Tibet by way of Mongolia, Siberia, and the Gobi Desert. Hedin explored Tibet and Xinjiang (Sinkiang), identified the sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus, and Sutlej rivers, and, in 1906, explored and named the Kailas Range. Accounts of these travels appeared in Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 (8 volumes, 1904-8), Trans-Himalaya (3 volumes, 1909-12), and Southern Tibet (12 volumes, 1917-22). In 1927 Hedin led an expedition of Chinese and Swedish scientists into Central Asia. He wrote Through Asia (1898), The Conquest of Tibet (1935), My Life as an Explorer (1926), and many other popular accounts of his travels.