Tadeusz Chrostowski

Tadeusz Chrostowski (25 October 1878 – 4 April 1923) was a Polish naturalist and explorer who made three expeditions to collect natural history specimens, especially birds, in the Paraná region.

He went to study physics and mathematics at Moscow University but was conscripted in the second year and sent with an infantry regiment to Siberia and Manchuria.

Returning to Poland in 1907 he began to study on his own and inspired by Konstanty Jelski, he sought to explore South America.

Following the Russian revolution in 1917 he defected from the Imperial army and lived under a false identity in St. Petersburg where he examined, thanks to Valentin Bianchi, the Brazilian bird collections at the zoological museum.

In 1918 he returned to Poland and obtained a position at the State Natural History Museum, heading the bird department.