Strzelecki pronunciation
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Explorer, Scientist, and Humanitarian Hero
By Caitlan Hester. Sir Paul Strzelecki (1797-1873) spent over four years exploring 7,000 miles of mainland Australia and Tasmania on foot.
He found gold and summited Australia’s highest mainland peak. He mapped New South Wales and set up irrigation channels in Tasmania.
These incredible contributions to Australian agricultural and economic growth would later earn him a knighthood.
Strzelecki was also a humanitarian, philanthropist, environmentalist, nobleman, scientist, and businessman. His research included geology, palaeontology, meteorology, mineralogy, geography, ethnology, biology, and agricultural science.
He could have retired early as a famed explorer and scientist. But he went on to selflessly serve over 200,000 children in Ireland during the Great Famine.
Early Life in Prussia
Paul (Pawel) Edmund de Strzelecki was born in Prussia-controlled Poland on July 20, 1797. He was the youngest of three children, born to noblemen.
Paul’s father died in 1801 followed by his mother in 1807. In response t
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Paweł Strzelecki
Polish-born explorer of Australia (1797–1873)
"Strzelecki" redirects here. For other uses, see Strzelecki (disambiguation).
Sir Paweł Edmund Strzelecki | |
|---|---|
Photograph taken about 1845 | |
| Born | (1797-07-20)July 20, 1797 Glausche, Posen, Prussia |
| Died | October 6, 1873(1873-10-06) (aged 76) London, United Kingdom |
| Resting place | Church of St. Adalbert, Poznań, Poland |
| Nationality | Polish, British Citizen from 1845 |
| Alma mater | University of Heidelberg[1] |
| Occupation(s) | Geographer, geologist, explorer |
| Known for | Exploration of Australia, work for the British Relief Association during the Great Famine (Ireland) |
| Awards | Founder's Medal (1846) Companion, Order of the Bath (1849) Knight Grand Cross, Order of St Michael and St George (1869), Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law (Oxon.) |
Sir Paweł Edmund StrzeleckiKCMG CB FRS FRGS DCL (Polish pronunciation:[ˈpavɛwˈɛdmuntstʂɛˈlɛt͡skʲi];[note 1] 20 July
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Exhibition, 9 May–30 August 2019, RIA, Dawson Street, Dublin.
Amidst the catastrophic horrors of Ireland’s Great Famine of 1845–50 a few bright examples of selfless humanitarianism shine through. One of these, little remembered in Ireland, was the Polish émigré Paul Edmund Strzelecki, known to many of his contemporaries simply as ‘the Count’. Arriving in Ireland in 1847, Strzelecki survived a bout of typhus fever to lead one of the most ambitious and successful charitable relief schemes, focusing on feeding one of the most vulnerable groups in society, the children of the rural poor.
Born near Poznán in the Prussian-occupied part of Poland in 1797 to a minor gentry family, Strzelecki left his country in 1829 following the failure of his attempts to establish himself as land agent to a princely family and a thwarted romance with a neighbouring landowner’s daughter. He would continue to correspond with his beloved Adyna Turno for the rest of his life, and much of what we know about him comes from these surviving letters. Strzelecki taught himself geology and mineralogy and, afte
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