Sir Richard Collinson KCB (7 November 1811 – 13 September 1883) was an English naval officer and explorer of the Arctic.

He was born in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, then part of County Durham. He joined the Royal Navy in 1823 at age twelve and rose in the ranks, becoming a lieutenant in 1835, commander in 1841, and captain in 1842.

Collinson commanded HMS Enterprise in the search for Sir John Franklin, entering the Northwest Passage through the Bering Strait. He sailed from Plymouth in January 1850, accompanied by the HMS Investigator, which was under the command of Robert McClure, his subordinate; however, the two ships became separated. As a result, the Enterprise arrived at Point Barrow, Alaska a fortnight after the Investigator and was forced to turn back due to ice and winter at Hong Kong, while McClure and the Investigator made it through and achieved recognition as the first ship to transit the Northwest Passage.

He was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society, knighted in 1875, and made an admiral on the retired list in the same year.

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.