Sir Robert Hermann Schomburgk, an English traveller, born at Freiburg-on-the-Unstrut, Prussia, June 5, 1804, died at Schöneberg, near Berlin, March 11, 1865. In early life he was for some time partner in a tobacco manufactory in Virginia. In 1830 he went almost penniless to the West Indies, and explored the little island of Anegada, one of the Virgin group. His valuable reports on the dangerous coasts procured him in 1834 from the English geographical society and some botanists the means of exploring British Guiana, where he spent four years. He published "Description of British Guiana, Geographical and Statistical" (London, 1840); "Views in the Interior of Guiana" (1840); and reports to the geographical society, translated into German by his brother Otto, with a preface by Alexander von Humboldt (Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoco, Leipsic, 1841). The great Victoria regia lily was discovered by him on this journey. From 1841 to 1844 he was at the head of a commission to survey the frontier between British Guiana and Brazil, and to make further geographical and ethnological investigations.

He was joined by his brother Moritz Richard, who published an account of the journey in German (3 vols., 1847-'8). Robert was knighted in 1845, and from 1848 to 1857 he was British consul and chargé d'affaires to the Dominican republic, and afterward till 1864 consul general at Bangkok, Siam. Besides the works mentioned, he published "History of Barbadoes" (1847), and "The Discovery of the Empire of Guiana by Sir Walter Raleigh" (1848).