OSSENDOWSKI, ANTONI FERDYNAND (1876 ), Polish traveller and writer, was born on May 27, 1876, in the government of Witebsk. He studied at St. Petersburg (Len ingrad) and at Paris, where he received the degree of docteur des sciences and officier d'Academie for his work entitled The Allotropy of Silver. He was appointed lecturer in physics and physical chemistry at the Tomsk Polytechnic, and he then be came successively a lecturer in chemistry, physics, geography; a manufacturer, a commercial manager, a journalist, a novelist, a physician, a draughtsman, a teacher of languages, and a min eralogist. At the university Ossendowski was sentenced to five months' imprisonment for taking part in a manifestation against capital punishment, and, at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, he was brought before a Russian law court for leading a patriotic organization in the Far East with the object of preventing civil war after the defeat of the Russian army. He was sentenced to
death but the sentence was later commuted to 20 months' im prisonment. During this period Ossendowski's books on prisons appeared, which led to a revision of the Russian prison system.
After the outbreak of the October Revolution, Ossendowski held office as financial adviser to the Government of General Kolchak in Siberia. After Kolchak's Government fell, he made his way through the forests to Mongolia disguised as a peasant. In 1926-27 he travelled in Central Africa. His journey through Central Asia is recounted in Beasts, Men and Gods (1923), and his other works on Asia include Man and Mystery in Asia and The Shadow of the Gloomy East (1925). His play The Living Buddha had a successful run at the National theatre in Warsaw.
See Sven Hedin, Ossendowski and die Wahrheit (1925).