Alexander von Humboldt: How the Most Famous Scientist of the Romantic Age Found the Soul of Nature

Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous scientist and explorer of his day. “I view him as one of the greatest ornaments of the age,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, and he received Humboldt in the White House in 1804. Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated Humboldt as “one of those wonders of the world,” and John Muir exclaimed, “How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt!” The great German poet Goethe was Humboldt’s friend, and after reading Humboldt’s work Charles Darwin, yearned to travel to distant lan...