Author: Johann Jakob von Tschudi

Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818-1889) was a Swiss naturalist, ethnographer and diplomat, born in Glarus and trained in medicine and natural science at Neuchâtel, Leiden and Paris. He sailed for South America at nineteen, and the specimens he brought back from Peru fed his "Untersuchungen über die Fauna Peruana", which gave the first systematic account of Peruvian animal life. He later edited "Antigüedades peruanas" with Mariano Eduardo de Rivero and published grammars of the Quichua language. From 1860 he represented Switzerland abroad, first in Brazil and afterwards in Vienna.