[2] In 1866, botanist A.Braun published Schweinfurthia which is a genus of flowering plants from Africa and Asia, belonging to the family Plantaginaceae and named in Georg August Schweinfurth's honour.

[3] His researches attracted so much attention that in 1868 the Berlin-based Alexander von Humboldt Foundation entrusted him with an important scientific mission to the interior of East Africa.

He described in detail the cannibalistic practices of the Mangbetu, and his discovery of the pygmy Aka people settled conclusively the question as to the existence of dwarf races in tropical Africa.

He returned to Khartoum in July 1871 and published an account of the expedition, under the title of Im Herzen von Afrika (Leipzig, 1874; English edition, The Heart of Africa, 1873, new ed.

In 1876, he travelled into the Arabian Desert with Paul Güssfeldt, and continued his explorations therein at intervals until 1888, and during the same period made geological and botanical investigations in the Fayum, in the valley of the Nile.