Sir Robert Hermann Schomburgk (5 June 1804 - 11 March 1865), was a German-born explorer for Great Britain who carried out geographical, ethnological and botanical studies in South America and the West Indies, and also fulfilled diplomatic missions for Great Britain in the Dominican Republic and Thailand. Schomburgk was born at Freyburg, Prussian Saxony, the son of a Protestant minister. In 1820, while staying with his uncle, he learned botany from a professor.