David Livingstone

David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, missionary, and explorer active in southern, central, and eastern Africa. He studied medicine and chemistry (with theology lectures) at Anderson's College, Glasgow, then trained for the London Missionary Society under Rev. Richard Cecil at Chipping Ongar, Essex, alongside further medical study in London, qualifying and being ordained in November 1840. He arrived in southern Africa in 1841 and undertook extended journeys across the interior over roughly three decades, serving at mission stations including Kuruman, Mabotsa (which he founded, and where a lion mauling in 1844 permanently crippled his left arm), Chonuane, and Kolobeng. He is associated with European documentation of Lake Ngami, the Zambezi River, and the waterfall he recorded as Victoria Falls in November 1855 during his 1853-1856 transcontinental crossing, and with the Zambezi Expedition (1858-1864) and his search for the sources of the Nile. In 1871 he was met at Ujiji by journalist Henry Morton Stanley. He died in 1873 near Lake Bangweulu; his remains were later interred at Westminster Abbey.