Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)

Alexander von Humboldt's enthusiastic letter thanking Darwin for a copy of his account of the voyage, Journal of Researches. CUL DAR 204, f. 180

Alexander von Humboldt was a well-born Prussian exponent of a science of earth and life that he called ‘Physique générale’. After working as a mining engineer, Humboldt used the wealth from his parents’ estate to finance a five-year trip to the Spanish Americas, where he scaled the Andes, explored the Orinoco River, and accumulated an enormous mass of data. Returning to Europe in 1804, he settled in Paris and used the information he had collected to produce many publications in which he compiled, analysed and represented that data in tables and distribution maps, writing in elegant and often beautiful prose. His books had a profound influence on Darwin who described him as ‘the parent of a grand progeny of scientific travellers’. Darwin’s obsession with the distribution of plants and animals, for instance, and his fascination with the altitude and submarine depth where he found his specimens, echoed themes central to Humboldt’s work.