Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster, was a German geographer, naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific. His report of that journey, A Voyage Round the World, contributed significantly to the ethnology of the people of Polynesia and remains a respected work. As a result of the report, Forster, who was admitted to the Royal Society at the early age of twenty-two, came to be considered one of the founders of modern scientific travel literature.
Georg Forster at age 26, by J. H. W. Tischbein, 1781
James Cook, portrait by Nathaniel Dance, c. 1775, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Resolution and Adventure in Matavai Bay by William Hodges
One of Forster's many illustrations of birds now extinct, the Tanna ground dove, also known as Forster's dove of Tanna
Ethnology is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them.
Adam František Kollár, 1779
Claude Lévi-Strauss
İzmir Ethnography Museum seen from the courtyard