Filchner, Wilhelm

Filchner, Wilhelm (vĭl`hĕlm fĭlkh`nər), 1877–1957, German explorer, geophysicist, and travel writer. He led several expeditions to China and Tibet, where he established magnetic stations, and also led the second German Antarctic expedition (1910–12), which discovered Luitpold Land on the southeast coast of Weddell Sea.

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Filchner, Wilhelm 

Born Sept. 13, 1877, in Munich; died May 7, 1957, in Zürich. German explorer of Central Asia and the antarctic.

Filchner crossed the Pamirs in 1900 and traveled in Tibet and China between 1903 and 1905 with A. Tafel. He worked on Spitsbergen in 1910. In 1911–12, Filchner led the German antarctic expedition to the Weddell Sea on the ship Deutschland and discovered the Luitpold Coast. Later he headed three expeditions that measured terrestrial magnetism: to Tibet and West China from 1926 to 1928 and from 1934 to 1938 and to Nepal in 1939–40. An ice shelf, mountains, and a cape in Antarctica and the rocks off the island of South Georgia are named after Filchner.

WORKS

Wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der Expedition Filchner nach China und Tibet 1903–1905, vols. 1–11. Berlin, 1906–14.
Zum sechsten Erdteil: Die zweite Deutsche Südpolar-Expedition. Berlin, 1923.
In der Fieberhölle Nepals. Weisbaden, 1951.

REFERENCE

Treshnikov, A. F. Istoriia otkrytiia i issledovaniia Antarktidy. Moscow, 1963.