13 January] 1852) was a Russian cartographer, explorer, and naval officer of Baltic German descent, who attained the rank of admiral.

[2] As a prominent cartographer, Bellingshausen was appointed to command the Russian circumnavigation of the globe in 1819–1821, intended to explore the Southern Ocean and to find land in the proximity of the South Pole.

The expedition discovered and named Peter I, Zavodovski, Leskov, Alexander, and Visokoi Islands, the Antarctic Peninsula, and made other discoveries in the tropical waters of the Pacific.

In 1831, he published the book on his Antarctic travels, called Double Investigation of the Southern Polar Ocean and the Voyage Around the World.

The preparation work on the two ships, the 985-ton sloop-of-war Vostok ("East") and the 530-ton support vessel Mirny ("Peaceful") was carried out by Mikhail Lazarev, who had captained his own circumnavigation of the globe before.

Banks had sailed with Captain James Cook fifty years earlier and supplied the Russians with books and charts for their expedition.

Jones concluded that Bellingshausen, rather than the Royal Navy's Edward Bransfield on 30 January 1820 or the American Nathaniel Palmer on 17 November 1820, was indeed the discoverer of the sought-after Terra Australis.

[citation needed] Returning to Kronstadt on 4 August 1821, Bellingshausen was made captain-commodore [ru], and received the rank of counter admiral from tsar Nicholas I in 1826.

In 1831, he published the book on his Antarctic travel, called Double Investigation of the Southern Polar Ocean and the Voyage Around the World.

In the Antarctic, multiple geographical features and locations, named in honor of Bellingshausen, remind of his role in exploration of the southern polar region.