Miklouho-Maclay: The Maclay Coast of New Guinea

In 1864, expelled from St Petersburg University and barred from higher education in Russia, the young Nikolai moved abroad to finish his studies in German universities. He read humanities at Heidelberg and medicine at Leipzig, then zoology at Jena, where he fell under the influence of the great Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel noticed his brilliant student record and made him an assistant. Everything that follows, from sponges to Papuans, grows out of this partnership.

Location precision: The sources name the university town, not a building; the pin marks Jena.

Visitor guidance: Jena's university sits in the centre of the old town.

In 1866 Haeckel took his assistant on a field expedition to the Canary Islands. There Miklouho-Maclay turned his attention to sharks and sponges and found a new sponge species. He named it Guancha blanca, after the Guanches, the original Berber inhabitants of the islands, a first sign of his lifelong interest in people as much as in animals. The expedition gave him a first taste of fieldwork far from any lecture hall.

Location precision: The sources name the archipelago, not the shore he worked on; the pin sits in the middle of the Canary Islands.

From 1871 Miklouho-Maclay lived in north-eastern New Guinea, one of the first scientists to settle among people "who had never seen a European". He called the stretch of coast around Astrolabe Bay the Maclay Coast, defining it as 150 miles between Cape Croisilles and Cape King William. The bay itself was found in 1827 by Jules Dumont d'Urville, who named it after his ship. The name Maclay Coast is no longer used today.

Location precision: The bay is wide and the sources do not give his first camp; the pin marks Astrolabe Bay near Madang.

Miklouho-Maclay lived among the native tribes of this coast and wrote a comprehensive treatise on their way of life and customs, which later researchers found invaluable. He came back to New Guinea again in 1883. In 2013 a monument celebrating his legacy was put up near Bongu village in Madang Province. In Madang a street also carries his name, not far from where he stayed in the 1870s.

Location precision: The monument stands near Bongu village; the pin marks the village, not the exact spot.

He arrived in Sydney on 18 July 1878. Within weeks he offered the Linnean Society a zoological centre, and the Marine Biological Station was built at Watsons Bay by architect John Kirkpatrick. It was the first marine biological research institute in Australia. The building later served as officers' barracks.

Location precision: The station was in Watsons Bay; the pin marks the suburb, not the building.

In 1887 he left Australia with his young family and returned to St Petersburg to present his work to the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. He was in poor health and, despite treatment from Sergei Botkin, died of an undiagnosed brain tumour at 41 on 14 April 1888. He was buried in the Volkovo Cemetery. His travel journals were not published until 1923, and an annotated five-volume edition of his works followed in 1953.

Location precision: The sources say Volkovo Cemetery without naming the section; the pin marks the cemetery, and the grave may lie in its Lutheran part.

Visitor guidance: Open cemetery in southern St Petersburg.