Pasquale Scaturro, the leader of the Nile First Descent Expedition, will deliver the Spencer Trask lecture 4 p.m. Sunday, April 15, in Friend Center 101 on the Princeton University campus.
The lecture, "The Exploration of the Great Rivers of Africa," is sponsored jointly by the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone Library and the University Committee on Public Lectures.
It precedes the opening of "To the Mountains of the Moon: Mapping African Exploration, 1541-1880," a map exhibition in the Rare Books Department. Both the lecture and exhibition are free and open to the public.
Mr. Scaturro, a geophysicist, is one of the most successful mountain and river expedition leaders in the world and has been exploring the far reaches of the planet for over 25 years. He is founder and president of Exploration Specialists, an international geophysical and exploration company.
He has managed geophysical oil and gas exploration and development projects in many of the most remote, dangerous, and politically and technically challenging areas on earth, and he has explored throughout North and South America, Africa and the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Scaturro has been a high-altitude mountaineering expert for more than two decades and has been the leader of numerous expeditions to major mountains worldwide, including three expeditions to Mt. Everest.
In 1998 he reached the summit of Mt. Everest, and in 2001 he conceived, organized, and led the National Federation of the Blind Everest Expedition, in which blind climber Erik Weihenmayer reached the summit.
He has also had multiple descents of major world-class rivers including the Bio Bio in Chile, rivers throughout North America, and the Omo and Zambezi in Africa.
From November 2003 to April 2004 he organized and led the historic 114#-#day Nile First Descent Expedition, the first complete descent of the Blue Nile and Nile River from its source high in the mountains of Ethiopia to the Mediterranean Sea, a distance of 3,260 miles. He has also filmed rafting and mountaineering projects for ESPN, PBS, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and OrbitaMax.
A simulcast of the lecture will be available in the Computer Science Building 104. For more information see http://lectures.princeton.edu.

