Thaddäus Xaverius Peregrinus Haenke (Czech: Tadeáš Haenke; Spanish: Tadeo Haenke; 6 December 1761 – 14 November 1816) was a geographer and explorer in South America.
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Thaddaeus Haenke was born of ethnic German extraction in the Bohemian village of Kreibnitz (now Chřibská), near the Sudeten Mountains(today Czech Republic) in 1761. A keen observer of nature from childhood, this aptitude was cultivated throughout his education at the Jesuit college in Prague, and later at Carolus University, where he studied medicine, botany and astronomy. He undertook a study of the botany of the Giant Range (Riesengebirge) of the Sudeten Mountains for the Royal Bohemian Academy of Science and, upon obtaining his degree of Magister in 1786, moved to Vienna. His botanical work took him to the Tyrol, Carinthia and Styria. He came to the notice of Ignaz von Born and Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin, influential savants who put his name forward in July 1789 when the Spanish Government was recruiting for the Malaspina expedition. Prior to this, Born had proposed to Emperor Joseph II an Austrian expedition to the Pacific comparable to those led by James Cook.[2] The expedition would have been commanded by William Bolts, of the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste. Although the Emperor was initially enthusiastic, the venture eventually proved impossible to realize, principally because of the bankruptcy of the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste.[3] The Emperor gave Bolts leave to take his proposal to other courts friendly to Austria, and Bolts put placed it before the French Government, which adopted the concept (though not its author) leading to the sending out of the Lapérouse expedition.[4] Haenke presumably would have been stimulated by the discussion associated with the schemes for round the world voyages of exploration to consider the advantages of participating in such an undertaking, and in fact he spent the period from September 1787 to May 1788 in anticipation of joining a proposed Russian expedition to the Pacific under the command of Grigory I. Mulovsky.[5] He would have been the assistant to the proposed expedition’s chief scientist, Georg Forster, who had accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on James Cook's expedition of 1772-1775. The Mulovsky expedition was prevented from leaving the Baltic by the outbreak of war with Sweden in 1787. Following cancellation of the expedition, Haenke applied to fill the position of Professor of Natural History at the University of Vilna (Vilnius) which Forster had vacated in anticipation of taking up his new post with the Russians, but when preparation of the Malaspina Expedition was announced, he expressed interest in joining it. A long journey from Vienna brought Haenke by way of Munich, Strasbourg, Paris, Bordeaux, Biarritz and Madrid (where he was formally received into the expedition as “Naturalist-Botánico de Su Magestad”) to Cadiz just five hours after the two ships of the expedition, the Descubierta and Atrevida, had set sail from that port. He sailed on a following vessel, intending to catch up with the expedition in Buenos Aires. This vessel was wrecked close to Monte Video, and the intrepid Haenke was forced to swim for the shore, salvaging from his luggage (it is said) only his copy of Linnaeus, which he carried in a nightcap. Having in this way missed the expedition again, he hired guides for a trek overland across the pampas and Andes to Santiago de Chile, where he caught up with Malaspina in April 1790.
Thereafter he continued with the expedition during its visits to Peru, Guayaquil, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, the North West American coast, California, Mexico again, Guam, the Philippines, New Zealand, New South Wales and Vavao, arriving again at Callao, Peru in June 1793. Here he left the ships to again cross overland to Buenos Aires, with the intention of undertaking botanical and other scientific work along the way. Instead, he stayed in Peru, continuing to work as Royal Botanist. In 1810 he was ordered to return to Spain but the political situation caused him to decide to remain in Peru, where he had an estate at Yuracaré, near Cochabamba, in what is now Bolivia. He continued his botanical and other scientific work, remaining in regular contact with his homeland through a Bohemian glass trading company. He died in Cochabamba of accidental poisoning (it is said) in 1816, aged 54.
After he joined it in Santiago de Chile on 2 April 1790 the Malaspina Expedition lasted another three years during which Haenke collected several thousand plants.[6] During the expedition’s stay at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, in March–April 1793, he carried out observations and collection relating to the natural history of the place, as he reported to the colony’s patron, Sir Joseph Banks.[7]
Haenke's work in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile finally contributed to the creation of the smallpox vaccine. During his expedition through the Atacama desert, he discovered a method for transforming Chile saltpeter and Potassium chloride into Potassium nitrate. Furthermore, he improved explosives and gun powder, giving his results to the Spanish army.
He was the first European to discover the largest water lily Victoria amazonica (in 1801[8]) and advocated the medicinal benefit of hot springs.
Haenke Island in Alaska and the plant Juncus haenkei were named after him.