Ludwig Becker (explorer)

Ludwig Becker (5 September 1808 – 29 April 1861) was a German artist, explorer and naturalist. He was born in Rödelheim near Frankfurt am Main. He moved to Australia in 1850, and was a member of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition. He died at the expedition's camp on the western bank of Koorliatto Waterhole, Bulloo River in 1861.

Becker was born at Rödelheim near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1808. He left Germany in 1850. As was common practice at the time, he was referred to as Dr. Becker, but had not studied at a university.

His father was Ernst Friedrich Becker (1750–1826) and his mother was Amöne Eleonore Weber (1782–1819). Becker was the eldest of five children from this marriage. After his mother's death, Becker's father married Johanette Christiane Weber, a younger sister of his first wife. They had three more children.

After some time in England he travelled from Liverpool in November 1850 on the ship Hannah via Pernambuco, Brazil, and arrived in Launceston, Van Diemen's Land in early 1851. He was described by Lady Denison as "one of those universal geniuses who can do anything ... a very good naturalist, geologist ... draws and plays and sings, conjures and ventriloquises and imitates the notes of birds so accurately". From 1852 until 1854, while mining for gold in Bendigo, Becker made meteorological observations and produced sketches which he exhibited in Melbourne in April 1854. He became a council member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1856 and of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria in 1859, and was a leading member of the German Club. He corresponded with ornithologist and zoologist John Gould, known as the father of bird study in Australia, on the lyrebird, and was one of the first to try to raise a lyrebird chick and sent sketches of the egg to ornithologists in Germany and France.

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