Eduard Vogel (7 March 1829February 1856) was a German explorer in Central Africa. Early career Vogel was born in Krefeld. He studied mathematics, botany and astronomy at Leipzig and Berlin, studying with Encke at the latter institution. In 1851, he was engaged as assistant astronomer to director John Russel Hind at George Bishop's private observatory in London. That year August Heinrich Petermann introduced Vogel to the Royal Geographical Society. Africa commission In 1853 Petermann arranged for Vogel to be chosen by the British government to join the Richardson, Overweg and Barth expedition with supplies. That expedition had been sent to Africa in 1849 to find a trade route that bypassed the Arabs. Vogel was to be a replacement for Richardson who had died two years earlier and was tasked to make geographical and meteorological observations and to collect botanical specimens. In 1853, the expedition was in the western Sudan. Vogel sailed from England on 20 February 1853. The day Vogel left London, news had arrived that Overweg had also died, leaving Barth on his own. Meeting Barth On 25 July, Vogel left Tripoli with a caravan to catch up with Barth. Vogel arrived at the end of the Trans-Saharan trade route, Kuka, the capital of Bornu on 13 January 1854. Vogel's specimens, and the fact that both expedition engineers were soldiers, made the king there suspicious of his intentions, and Vogel's movements were severely restricted. Instead of waiting for Barth to return, on 19 July, Vogel joined a steamboat expedition heading up the Niger and Benue Rivers to the Mandara Mountains where he was imprisoned by the king of Mora who had received a message about the suspicious stranger from Bornu. Vogel eventually escaped to Marghi in Nigeria where he waited for news of Barth. Upon hearing of a change of king in Bornu, Vogel returned to wait for Barth, whom he met December 1854. By some accounts Vogel was disliked by the other members of the expedition due to his poor attitude, difficult personality and unwillingness to learn Arabic, the lingua franca of north Africa. The arrival of Barth helped defuse some of the conflict, although one of the two engineers refused to travel any further while Vogel was part of the expedition. Barth himself contemplated getting rid of Vogel and stealing his equipment. Further exploration Vogel left Barth, and taking one engineer and four servants headed for Bauchi