Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (1831–1903) was a French-American explorer, naturalist, ethnographer, and popular writer best known for publicizing the gorilla in Europe and the United States. Born on Réunion, then a French colony in the Indian Ocean, he spent part of his youth in West Africa, where his father worked as a trader. Between 1855 and 1859, Du Chaillu traveled through regions of present-day Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, collecting animal specimens and recording observations of local peoples, languages, and customs. His accounts of gorillas, including reports of hunting them and descriptions of their size and behavior, attracted enormous attention after the publication of Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa in 1861. Some scientists initially challenged the accuracy of his reports and collections, but gorillas were soon firmly established as a real and distinct species in public understanding. He later published Journey to Ashango-Land and several books for younger readers. In his later career, he turned to Scandinavian history and archaeology, producing The Viking Age in 1889, an ambitious study of Norse culture based on sagas, artifacts, and historical sources. Du Chaillu died in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1903.
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