Humboldt, Alexander von

hum'bolt, Alexander von (1769-1859), a German traveler and naturalist. He was a native of Berlin. His father was a man of rank. Alexander was educated at the universities of Frankfurt, Berlin, and Gottingen. He studied mining and botany at Freiberg and became an overseer of mines. From boyhood he had a strong desire to travel. In 1797 he resigned his position. He resided for a time at Jena, where he fell in with Goethe and Schiller. His brother Carl Wilhelm had taken to public life and had been appointed Prussian minister to Paris. Alexander accompanied him and made a study of the famous botanical gardens in that city. He then went to Madrid and obtained the king's permission to travel in the Spanish countries of South America. He spent five years in exploring that grand division. He traced the head waters of the Orinoco into those of the Amazon, visited Cuba, crossed the Andes five times, and climbed Chimborazo. He visited Mexico and the United States. In 1804 he landed at Bordeaux, France, with an immense amount of fresh knowledge of geography, geology, climate, botany, zoology--in short, every branch of natural science--as well as an acquaintance with native peoples and political conditions in the countries he had visited. He settled at Paris and wrote up his observations, publishing them in a number of volumes. After the close of the Napoleonic wars he accompanied his brother Wilhelm on several trips to European capitals. He delivered a course of lectures in the newly founded University of Berlin, of which his brother was a patron. In 1829 he was invited by the czar of Russia to undertake another expedition into northern Asia. He now had an opportunity to study the Ural and Altai Mountains and the basin of the Caspian Sea. This trip covered a journey of 9,614 miles, and gave him material for a new series of volumes. He was engaged for a time in diplomatic work. In 1845-58 he wrote a large work called Cosmos, on which his reputation chiefly rests. It discusses physical laws and effects, and may be regarded as the basis of the modern subject of physical geography. No scientific man of that day had traveled so widely as he. Very many of the geographical principles, now understood by every school boy, were then understood imperfectly or not at all. Humboldt had a great mind for deducing principles. His opportunity was great. He made the most of it. His is one of the great names in the history of geography and of physical science. See Geography