Herman Spöring

Herman Diedrich Spöring Jr. (1733–1771) was a Finnish explorer, draughtsman, botanist and a naturalist.

He was born in 1733 in the Finnish town of Åbo, at that time the major Finnish city and administrative center under the Kingdom of Sweden. He was the son of an amateur naturalist and professor of Medicine at the Academy of Åbo, Herman Spöring Sr. (1701–1747). Spöring Jr. attended the Academy as a youth, studying medicine under his father.

Sometime around 1755, at the age of 22 he went to London, where he worked at a watchmakers. During this time he became acquainted with the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, who employed him as a personal clerk for a time.

In 1768 Spöring was enlisted as a clerk, assistant naturalist and personal secretary in the entourage of Joseph Banks, a wealthy young botanist who was preparing for an expedition sponsored by the Royal Society to the Pacific Ocean. This expedition had as one of its principal goals the observation of the transit of Venus; however it was also intended to make scientific studies of the flora and fauna of any new lands encountered. Indeed, the confidential purpose of the voyage (in particular, from the point of view of the British Admiralty) was to seek out the hypothetical "unknown southern continent", orTerra Australis (Incognita).

The other noted naturalist on the voyage was Daniel Solander, Spöring's former employer who had recommended Spöring for the post when he himself signed up. Solander was a former student and protégé of the noted Swedish botanist and founder of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus.

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