Carl Peter Holbøll

Who was Carl Peter Holbøll?

Carl Peter Holbøll was an officer in the Danish Royal Navy, Greenland colonial officer and explorer of the Greenlandic fauna.

Holbøll served as Royal Inspector of Colonies and Whaling in North Greenland, then Inspector of South Greenland. While in this post he became interested in natural history. His main contribution was to send large amounts of faunistic collections to the zoologists in Copenhagen. For example, professor Johannes Theodor Reinhardt described the North American form of the Red-necked Grebe and named it Podiceps holboellii. Holbøll himself also wrote a treatise on Greenlandic birds. In the paper, he described the Hoary Redpoll, which he named for the botanist Jens Wilken Hornemann. Hornemann had previously received plant collections from Holbøll and named a new species Arabis holboellii.

Holbøll was also a skilled amateur botanist and entomologist. He wrote a school book for mathematics teaching in Greenland, which was used for about a century.