Wilhelm Sievers

Wilhelm Sievers
During his first expedition to Colombia in 1886

Friedrich Wilhelm Sievers (3 December 1860 – 11 June 1921) was a German geologist and geographer. He served as professor of geography at the University of Giessen. His field work focussed on South America, and his Allgemeine Länderkunde was for several decades a standard work on world geography.

Sievers was born into a merchant family in Hamburg. He was educated at Jena, Göttingen, and Leipzig, and was made Privatdozent at Würzburg in 1887 after extensive travels in Venezuela and Colombia. In his education, he broke with his mercantile family's tradition in order to study the emerging academic field of geography. He was one of Ferdinand von Richthofen's first students.

On instructions from the Geological Society of Hamburg made three expeditions to South America to carry out geographical and geological studies on the different regions of the country inspired by the expeditions of Alexander von Humboldt. Sievers mainly focusing on documenting evidence for a South American ice age. In 1902, from the chatedra of Geography of the University of Giessen, he made public his opposition to the naval blockade that Germany, England and Italy imposed on Venezuela to force the collection of the foreign debt. In 1909, he established the headwaters of the Marañón, the main source of the Amazon river.

Wilhelm Sievers published the Allgemeine Länderkunde (several editions 1891-1935), which for several decades was the leading international geographical publication covering all continents.