Antoni Waga

Antoni Stanisław Florian Waga (8 May 1799 – 23 November 1890) was a Polish zoologist, writer, literary critic and Piarist. He was also a collector of rare books on natural history.

Waga in Egypt

Waga was born in Grabów near Kolno to Bernard and Agata née Gutowska. The botanist Jakub Ignacy Waga was his brother. He studied at a Warsaw school run by Piarists and then went to the Warsaw Lyceum. From 1818 he taught Polish, natural history and other subjects at Piarist schools. In 1820 he received a scholarship which supported a visit to the University of Berlin, Leipzig and Königsberg. He took a special interest in ornithology. He then returned to study at the University of Warsaw from 1823 and became a professor at the Warsaw Lyceum in 1826. From 1832 he was at the Warsaw Gymnasium. Waga collaborated with Aleksander and Konstanty Branicki, Franciszek K. Nowakowski and Władysław Taczanowski, travelling on collecting expeditions in Egypt, Nubia, Sudan, and Syria between 1862 and 1867. Following his retirement, he concentrated on natural history and published extensively on the Polish invertebrate fauna. He collected rare books on natural history, which included a sixteenth century book on bird hunting by Mateusz Cyganski which Waga republished in 1842. He also wrote poetry and popular texts on natural history.[1][2][3]