David Sears, text and photos
More of the Earth's surface is named for this portly Danish man than for any other of history's great explorers - Columbus, Magellen, Marco Polo, Cook, Lewis and Clark.
His exploits are many and quite significant - the great expeditions he led gave shape to Russia, for example, and discovered America from the west, in 1741.
If you can't quite recall his story, you're not alone. But for a handful of scholars and cultists, history has mostly forgotten him, too, just as it has forgotten his face.
But that changed in 1991.