Defending the Rivers of the Amazon

Amazon Watch and International Rivers have teamed up to create a state-of-the-art 10-minute Google Earth 3-D tour and video narrated by actress Sigourney Weaver, with technical assistance from Google Earth Outreach. The video is in support of Brazil's Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre (Xingu River Forever Alive Movement). The tour allows viewers to learn about the harmful impacts of, and alternatives to the massive Belo Monte Dam Complex on the Amazon's Xingu River.

Massacres in the Peruvian Rain Forest

Exploitation and the Rubber Trade
Throughout history the wealth of the Forest has attracted adventurers and outcasts in search of the mythical El Dorado. The existence of natives hindered the absolute dominion over the bountiful rubber woods and rivers of gold, and aroused dark hatreds that always meant harm to the Amazonian people. This hatred led to massacres untold.
Orellana, during the Spanish Conquest searched for the hidden city of Gold and was defeated by tropical diseases. However, adventurers were not deterred for ever.
The need for rubber in the early 1900's launched greedy expeditions throughout the world. International corporations settled in Iquitos and from there mastered a vast network of native villages forced under threat of dead to supply rubber on a continuous basis. To trap those who did not comply with their rubber quotas, corporations cunningly utilised the ancestral rivalry among different natives.
Among the known and unknown of massacres, the rubber genocide was well documented in the Putumayo Trial, a summarised version of which follows:
The Putumayo Trial
In the National Library the papers of the Putumayo Trial report that in the year 1907 a trial was opened against "Víctor Macedo, Miguel Loayza, Carlos Miranda, José Inocente Fonseca, Luis Alcorta, Miguel Flores, Armando Normand, Aurelio Rodriguez, Arístides O'Donnell, Alfredo Montt, Abelardo Calderón, Elías Martinengui, Abelardo Agüero, Bartolomé Guevara, Augusto Jiménez, Dagoberto Arriarán and N.Suárez as authors of fraud, theft, burning with fire, rape, poisoning and murder, all of these accompanied by the most cruel tortures such as fire, water, whip and mutilations. The trial report indicates that all these crimes were known and approved by the Arana, Vega y Compañía, and Julio C. Arana y Hnos companies.
"These crimes took place on the tributaries of the Putumayo river, between rivers Igarparaná, Caraparaná, Cahuinarí, Cotuhé Idima, Menage and others."
"In 1903, some 800 Ocaina Indians arrived in "La Chorrera" to deliver the rubber they had harvested, and after having weighed the products the head of section, Fidel Velarde pointed out 25 Indians and accused them of being lazy at work. This was enough for Macedo to have them dressed with a cloth bag, imbibed in kerosene and ignited with fire. The poor Indians ran to the river yelling and crying in despair, and all of them died.
"..............Fonseca has a harem of ten native girls, ranging between 8 and 15 years of age.
"..............Miguel Flores, another of the Putumayo hyenas murdered so many natives that Victor Macedo, afraid of that section's depopulation ordered Flores 'not to kill so many Indians' in his orgies, but only when they did not deliver rubber quotas. Thus, the reformed Flores 'only' killed 40 Indians in the next 2 months but continued to whip and mutilate them. Fingers, arms, ears, legs were cut out and castrations took place every day.
"..............Matanzas is another section of Igara Parana with the greatest number of skeletons, hundreds of Indians have been killed under Normand's orders. This young man, who is barely 22 years old.... has people killed without any mercy and burns them by the hundreds, and whips them by the thousands. The whipped victims receive no cure whatsoever, their wounds get worm-ridden and once they become totally useless for work they are killed with machetes.
"..............Periodically 'correrías' take place in this way: the head of section orders his employees to arm themselves and travel in search of the Indian 'nations' who must collect and deliver rubber every ten days. Those [Indians] who do not comply are whipped 25 times by Barbados Negroes who have arrived in this region to work only as executioners. When the Indians do not attend to the meeting place because they could not harvest rubber, the head of section orders his civilised employees to look for them and to follow them with 10 or 15 savage Indians who are enemies of those they look for. When they are found, their houses are burnt and when they try to escape the employees fire at them. Before the fire is over they get all those who could not leave the hut: elder people, babies, cripples, they all die under the lethal stroke of the Putumayo machete."

Iquitos, August 9th., 1907
In the Putumayo Trial Report Pablo Zumaeta, manager of The Peruvian Amazon Co. Ltd. in Iquitos is quoted in his reply to the accusations "Indians should not be considered witnesses in any trial because they are under transition into civilised life, they have no notion of what Law or Right means. They should be previously educated to have conscience and be able to acknowledge the value and advantages of civilisation ... such purpose existed under the Spanish Viceroy when Indians were reduced in towns where they were taught Spanish and Catholic religion and were provided with adequate laws.
"However, nothing of this sort has taken place in the Putumayo area, where Indians are barely being introduced into civilisation."
Later he blames "the Colombian Rafael Tovar, Eladio Trujillo, Plata and others for the crimes of homicide, theft, rape, women kidnapping, fires, and others. However, after having been imprisoned, they were released upon request of the Colombian consul so as to avoid unpleasant diplomatic problems."
The trial was interrupted without any explanation until 1910 when it had to be resumed upon request of international human right organisations.
The judge, Dr. Paredes went on inspection to the sites together with the English Consul, Sir Roger Cassement.
Dr. Paredes declared: "I could not find any of the main criminals when I arrived in Putumayo. The presence of a Consul caused them fear, the presence of a judge made them flee. They all escaped, some to Brazil, others to Argentina, to Barbados, etc. I could only find new employees and heads of section.
"The real massacres, the hideous crimes peaked in 1906. As of 1907, they decreased a bit, and by the time I arrived in Putumayo, on March 26th., 1911, crimes against the savages were rare and isolated."

Colombia apology for devastation in Amazon rubber boom

 

 Many Colombian indigenous peoples are threatened by conflict between left-wing rebels and the army

Colombia's president has apologised to indigenous communities in the Amazon for deaths and destruction caused by the rubber boom around 100 years ago.

Backed by Colombia's government, a Peruvian firm tapped rubber from 1912 to 1929 near La Chorrera in the south.
Up 100,000 people were killed and communities devastated, according to indigenous leaders.
President Juan Manuel Santos asked for forgiveness "for all the dead and their orphans".
He apologised "in the name of a company, a government".
Mr Santos said that in pursuit of progress, the government of the day "failed to understand the importance of safeguarding each indigenous person and culture as an essential part of a society we now understand as multi-ethnic and multicultural."
Torture and mutilation Rubber barons in the Amazon carried out horrendous human rights abuses, first documented by British diplomat Roger Casement in 1912.
These included forced labour, slavery, torture and mutilation, says the BBC's Arturo Wallace in Colombia.
The apology was issued on the day Latin Americans mark the beginning of Spanish colonisation.
The Day of the Race, as the date is known in the region, commemorates the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the continent on 12 October 1492.
The president named nine indigenous peoples who were decimated by the rubber-tapping project of Julio Cesar Arana, a controversial Peruvian entrepreneur and politician.
"It is essential to contribute towards healing the wounds inflicted on your lives and in the memory of our nation," he said.
President Santos vowed that such abuses would never happen again.
The Colombian government recognises 87 indigenous groups but the Colombian Indigenous Organisation, OIC says there are 102.
Up to one-third of them face extinction because of the armed conflict and forced displacement.

Monsanto's Biopiracy

By Vandana Shiva
April 27, 2004
Zmag

Wheat the Golden grain, is called "Kanak" in North Western India. It is the staple of a large majority. Wheat diversity has been evolved by Indian farmers over millennia for taste, for nutrition, for ecological adaptation to cold climates and hot climates, dry regions and wet regions.
Barely four years after starting work, in December 1909, the book entitled "wheat in India" was published. By 1924 no fewer than thirty one papers exclusively on wheat had appeared. A survey of work was presented to the Royal Society of Arts in 1920.
In 1916-1920 indigenous Indian varieties won prizes in International Grain Exhibitions. Indian Wheat was so important a crop for the British Empire that an important Resolution of the Government of India no. I - 39-50 of March 17th, 1877 was passed on the wheat question requiring the Governor General to provide all information on Indian wheat including "local names for the varieties of wheat cultivated and three description in English". More than 1000 wheat samples in bags of 2 pounds each were sent to the India office, examined by Forbes Watson, and a detailed report provided to the Secretary of the State.
Sir Albert Howard, the founder of Modern Organic Farming and his wife G.L.C. Howard started to document and systematize India's wheat diversity. They identified 37 separate botanical varieties of wheat belonging to 10 sub-species.
The Ghoni, Kanku, Rodi, Mundli, Retti, Kunjhari, Sindhi, Kalhia, Sambhergehna, Sambhau, Kamla, Laila, Dandi, Gangajali, Pissia, Ujaria, Surlek, Manipuri, Anokhla, Tamra, Mihirta, Munia, Gajia, Mundia, Merdha, Dudhia, Lurkia, Jamali, Lalka, Harahwa, Galphulia¬Ö.
An amazing diversity of indigenous wheat was evolved by farmers through their indigenous innovation and knowledge. In 1906, the Howards began to select and systematize Indian wheat in Pusa (Bihar) and Lyallpur in Punjab (now Pakistan) and made Indian wheat known worldwide. Howard's work on wheat paid full tribute to the genius of Indian peasants. As he wrote in his plan to study and improve Indian wheat.
"The present condition of Indian agriculture is the heritage of experience handed down from time immemorial by a people little affected by the many changes in the government of the country. The present agricultural practices of India are worthy of respect, however strange and primitive they may appear to Western ideas. The attempt to improve Indian agriculture on Western lines appears to be a fundamental mistake. What is wanted is rather the application of Western scientific methods to the local conditions so as to improve Indian agriculture on its own lines."
Millennia of breeding by millions of Indian farmers is however now being hijacked by Monsanto which is claiming to have "invented" the unique low-elasticity, low gluten properties of an indigenous Indian wheat, rice lines derived from such wheat and all flours, batters, biscuits and edible products made from such wheat.
On 21st May, 2003, the European Patent Office in Munich granted a patent to Monsanto with the number EP 445929, with the simple title "plants", even though plants are not patentable in European Law. The patent covers wheat exhibiting a special baking quality, derived from native Indian wheat. With the patent, Monsanto holds a monopoly on the farming, breeding, and processing of a range of wheat varieties with low elasticity. Earlier in a patent (EP 518577) filed in 1998 Unilever and Monsanto have claimed "invention" of an exclusive claims to the use of flour to make traditional kinds of Indian bread such as "chapattis".
And it is not just in Europe that Monsanto has filed and obtained patents based on the biopiracy of Indian wheat. In the U.S on May 3, 1994 patent number 5,308,635 was given for low elasticity wheat flour blends, on June 9, 1998 patent number 5,763,741 was given for wheat which produce dough with low elasticity, and on January 12, 1999, patent number 5,859,315 another patent was granted for wheats which produce dough with low elasticity.
Through these global patents based on biopiracy, Monsanto is literally seeking to control our daily bread. The wheat variety which has been pirated from India, has been recorded as NapHal in the gene banks from which Monsanto got the wheat and in Monsanto's patent claims. The name NapHal is not the name of an Indian variety. Indian varieties were fully documented by Howard in Wheats of India. NapHal means "no seeds", and is not, and cannot be an indigenous seed variety because farmers bred seed to produce seed.
They did not breed "Terminator seeds" for which the Indian name could be "NapHal". This is clearly a distortion that has crept into the gene bank records because the original variety was stolen, not collected. NapHal is the name given by W.Koelz, USDA. However Koelz clearly did not make the collections himself, but was handed over the varieties, since the locations are inaccurate. The altitudes and longitude / latitudes do not match. According to our search, W.Koelz made the following collections :
Date of Collection Locality

a.. 10.4.48 Marcha, Uttar Pradesh, India Elevation - 3050 meters Latitude - 28o mm N Longitude - 80o mm E

a.. 10.7.48 Subu Uttar Pradesh, India Elevation - 3050 meters Latitude - 28o mm N Longitude - 80o mm E

a.. 19.7.48 Nabi, Uttar Pradesh, India Elevation - 2745 meters Latitude - 29.50o mm N Longitude - 79.30o mm E

a.. 21.7.48 Saro, Nepal Elevation - Not given Latitude - 28o mm N Longitude - 84o mm E
The latitude 28o N and longitude 80o E lies in the plains near Shajahanpur. The elevation here is clearly not 3000 meters. This altitude is in the higher Himalayan ranges with different latitude and longitude. In any case Marcha is not the name of the village but a sub tribal category of the Bhotias who are Tibetans speaking Buddhist living in the upper regions of the Himalayas. The terms Bhotia came from Bo which is the native Tibetan word for Tibet.
The discrepancy in the location and in the name indicate that the variety referred to as NapHal was pirated, not collected. Probably the name is a distortion of Nepal, since one sample was from Nepal and indigenous varieties names Nepal are in the NBPGR collection.

We have challenged Monsanto wheat biopiracy both in the Indian Supreme Court and in the European Patent Office in Munich with Greenpeace. As our challenge submitted to the EPO on 17th February, 2004, stated,
"The patent is a blatant example of biopiracy as it is tantamount to the theft of the results of endeavours in cultivation made by Indian farmers. In the countries of the southern hemisphere, it is frequently the small farmers who make a decisive contribution to agricultural diversity and secure sufficient food supplies by freely swapping seeds and breeding regionally modified forms of crops.
Monsanto is now unscrupulously exploiting the fruits of their labour. The company is able to restrict not only the farming and processing of crops, but also trade in them, in the countries for which the patent has been granted. At the same time it can block the free exchange of the seed, thus preventing other growers and farmers from working with the patented seeds.
The wheat exhibiting these special baking qualities is the result of the labours of cultivators and farmers in India who originally grew these plants for their own regional requirements, growing them to bake traditional Indian bread (chapatis). As it is natural for these farmers to freely swap seeds, it comes as no surprise that this wheat seed has been stored in various international gene banks outside India for many years.
Thus, samples of the seed can be found in the collections held by the US agricultural administration as well as in Japan and Europe. The patent owner uses these features to achieve his own business goals in a way which can only be regarded as indecent.
Unilever and Monsanto also have unrestricted access to these seed banks. They took the wheat to their laboratories, where they searched for the genes responsible for the special baking qualities. And, indeed, they were able to find the gene sequences which they had been looking for in the plant. In this connection, they were aided by the research results of various scientists as the corresponding gene regions had been undergoing examination for quite some time. It is this natural combination of genes which has now been patented by Monsanto as an "invention"."

This patent needs to be challenged on the following grounds :
The traits of low elasticity, low gluten which are being patented are not an invention, but derived from an Indian variety. The crossing with a soft milling variety is an obvious step to any breeder. The patent is based on piracy, not on non-obvious novelty, and hence needs to be challenged to stop legal precedence being created on false claims to invention.
The broad scope of the patent covering products made with Indian wheat robs Indian food processes and biscuit manufacturers of their legitimate export market and could in future affect our domestic food sovereignty. The Governments 2020 vision refers to making India a "global food factory".

However if Monsanto has the patent based on piracy of Indian wheat, India's "food factory" will be controlled by Monsanto, not Indian food processors and producers. The governments policy if it has to be successful, must have the Monsanto patent revoked in order to bring market benefits for our unique food products to the country's producers - both farmers and food processors.
With an estimated annual turnover of US$ 1.5 billion, the baking industry in India is one of the largest manufacturing sectors in India, production of which has been increasing steadily in the country. The two major bakery industries, viz. Bread and biscuit account for about 82 percent of the total bakery products. With overall annual growth estimated at 6.9%. According to ASSOCHAM India, a business support services firm, there are almost 85,000 bakeries in the country. Approximately 75,000 of these operate in the unorganised sector, which has a 60% market share. The remaining 1,000 bakeries operate in the organised sector, which has a 40% market share.
Packaged Food in India, a recently released report from Euromonitor, recorded year 2000 volume sales of the organised biscuit sector at 500,000 MT, or approximately US$492 million in value terms. The unorganised sector, which supplies 60% of total production, has an annual turnover of nearly US$718 million. If combined, the two sectors would bring overall biscuit sales to more than US$ 1.2 billion annually, or 1.3 MMT, making India the world's second largest biscuit manufacturer and consumer behind the US.
Further, the patent covers not just biscuits but all edible products and flours with low elasticity. India Chapatis are in effect covered by the patent.
If such biopiracy based patents are not challenged, and crop lines and products based on unique properties evolved through indigenous breeding become the monopoly of MNC's, in future we will be paying royalties for our innovations especially in light of the Patent Cooperation Treat and upward harmonization of patent law.
Monsanto's wheat biopiracy patent should be a wake up call to citizens and governments of the world. It is yet another example of why the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) of W.T.O needs to be changed, and why traditional knowledge and community rights need to be legally recognized and protected.

Avatar in the Amazon...?

Beyond extraction conference -free

 

Please share the webpage and invite people to join the Facebook group of the conference. The program is also attached, as well as an email to forward to your network if we haven't already done so (it went out to some programs already).

Also, please register for the conference if you plan to join by writing beyondextraction@gmail.com.

On Saturday night, there is also an awesome Cree singer coming, Mama D. Social event starts at 8PM and will be at Avant Garde.

 

 

The spliting of an atom

Dirty Old Man

You can vote ONCE PER DAY from multiple devices (computers, smart phones, ipads, etc.), and of course, if you feel inclined to share the link on your facebook pages, we would be extra, extra grateful! Voting ends on Sunday at midnight. All you have to do is click on this link and your vote will be cast automatically!

http://music.cbc.ca/#/Searchlight-All-in-a-Day

Thanks everyone! 

All the best, 

Amelia

 

Is our next generation like this kid?

Alexander Von Humboldt

By: Jeffrey Lee

Self-portrait

Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the last true generalists in science.  While generally considered a geographer, he contributed to most of the sciences of the natural environment found today.  Born in Berlin, von Humboldt’s father was Chamberlain to the King, a royal advisor, who died when Alexander was nine years old. As a child, he received a private education and was a slow learner and sickly much of the time.  On his own, though, he loved collecting local plants and animals and reading books on foreign travel and adventure.  He also loved to draw, mostly landscapes.  Typical of the time, science was not part of his schooling; Humboldt was generally self taught in that area.  At sixteen, he attended some lectures on physics and philosophy by a local doctor and then he decided to pursue a career in science.

Humboldt attended several universities, but never for very long.  His mother wanted him to get a job with the Prussian Civil Service and to appease her he ended up at the Hamburg School of Commerce.  There he studied intensely for his courses and with equal intensity his other interests in geology, botany and languages.  He developed a liberal approach to politics and a visit to Paris in 1790, while the ideals of the French Revolution were still apparent, confirmed his convictions.

In 1791 he got a position with the Prussian Academy of Industry and Mines, where he was given a thorough education in geology at the Freiberg Mining Academy.  A. G. Werner, one of the leading geologists of the day, was one of his instructors.  His job with the Bureau of Mines gave him ample opportunity to travel and do scientific investigations.  Some of his studies were mining related but his wide interests led him to do research on many topics in his spare time.  (Throughout his life, he typically slept only three or four hours per night.)  He published an exhaustive study on electrical effects on nerves and muscles, though his conclusions were quickly shown to be incorrect by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, namesake of the unit ‘volt’.  His botanical work, however, brought him lasting acclaim in the scientific world.  He became good friends with Goethe, the leading intellectual of Germany.  While best known for his poetry and plays, Goethe was also a statesman and scientist.  The two learned much from each other.

Humboldt’s mother died in 1796 and he was left a respectable fortune.  He resigned his mining job and set out to go exploring.  He was to join a British expedition to the Nile, but Napoleon invaded Egypt.  Then he was set to join a French voyage around the world, but war with Austria broke out and the government withdrew the funds.  While preparing for this voyage, though, he met Aimé Bonpland, a French botanist.  The two became good friends and decided to set out on their own expedition at Humboldt’s expense.  They convinced the King and Queen of Spain to allow them to visit the Spanish American Colonies, where few foreigners were welcome.  The two sailed to the New World with a collection of the best scientific instruments Humboldt could buy.  As he said in a letter, “I shall try to find out how the forces of nature interact upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life.  In other words, I must find out about the unity of nature.”

Humboldt and Bonpland spent five years in the New World.  In 1799 they arrived in Venezuela.  They explored the Orinoco and Rio Negro Rivers in that colony, mapping and collecting natural history specimens in the rainforest.  Next they traveled in the Andes Mountains in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru.  They spent several months in the city of Quito, mostly exploring the local volcanoes.  Humboldt and Bonpland climbed Chimborazo, then thought to be the highest mountain in the world at 6300 meters.  Humboldt and Bonpland only reached 5900 meters, but that was far higher than any known human had ever been.  This feat brought international attention to Humboldt as an adventurer.  (Bonpland never received the accolades that Humboldt did, presumably because Humboldt was the leader of the expedition.)  Humboldt’s observations in the volcanic region led him to argue forcefully that volcanic activity is a major force in mountain building, a concept not commonly understood at the time.  He also made the observation that altitude and latitude play similar roles in controlling plant types: at the base of the Andes is tropical rainforest, while at the top is tundra-type vegetation.  They then spent a year in Mexico, traveling and studying the geography, economics and politics of that colony.  While sailing from Peru to Mexico, Humboldt took careful measurements of the ocean current there, now known as the Humboldt Current. 

Before returning to Europe in 1804, they visited the young United States.  In Philadelphia they were treated warmly by the American Philosophical Society, the leading scientific organization in the country.  They also stayed with President Thomas Jefferson in Washington D.C., a small town still under construction.  Humboldt and Jefferson shared a love of science and had similar political philosophies.  Dolly Madison, wife of then Secretary of State James Madison, said of Humboldt: “We have lately had a great treat in the company of a charming Prussian Baron von Humboldt.  All the ladies say they are in love with him….  He is the most polite, modest, well-informed and interesting traveler we have ever met, and is much pleased with America.”

In their five year journey, Humboldt and Bonpland traveled 10000 kilometers through difficult terrain.  They returned with over 60000 plant specimens, along with geological, ethnographic and zoological collections.  In addition, they had a wealth of astronomical, oceanographic, meteorological and magnetic observations and they corrected the latitude and longitude positions of many geographic features.

Humboldt returned as a grand celebrity in Europe, especially Paris where he lived.  He worked on publications and socialized much, and he wrote between one and two thousand letters each year.  Napoleon never trusted the Prussian Humboldt and the secret police watched him and broke into his home often to copy his papers (with quill pen and ink!).  In spite of this, Paris was the intellectual center Humboldt required and he lived there for twenty-five years after his return from the Americas.  Humboldt never married and it is generally assumed that he was homosexual.  This is based on some love letters he wrote as a young man and the many close relationships he had with men throughout his life.

The publications resulting from the American expedition took thirty years to complete.  The thirty volumes of [[Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland ]]are a mix of scientific results, geographic and economic studies, and travel/adventure books.  He often worked with experts in various fields on the scientific volumes.  Humboldt wrote on climatology, geology, ecology, biogeography, economic geography, oceanography, ethnography, and history.  Bringing the books to fruition broke Humboldt financially; he had to pay for the artists who illustrated them along with the engravings and general printing costs.  Sales of the necessarily pricey books never made up for the expenses.

Bonpland participated in some of the botanical work, but while he was a superb field scientist, he was generally incompetent at desk work.  He became superintendent of gardens for Empress Josephine, had a short marriage, and in 1816 he returned to South America.  He worked as a professor in Argentina and while on an expedition to an area disputed by Argentina and Paraguay, the Paraguayans took him prisoner.  They held him for nine years, despite Humboldt’s diplomatic efforts to get his friend released.  Later, Bonpland settled in Uruguay and seems to have led a happy life living in a mud hut, doing botanical work, and raising children until he died at age 85.  After Humboldt and Bonpland returned to France in 1804, the French government awarded Bonpland a 3000 franc pension as thanks for his achievements; each year Humboldt made sure that it was sent to his friend in South America.

In 1827 Humboldt left Paris for Berlin, serving as Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, Frederick William III.  One of his duties was to report on cultural and scientific matters.  Though he got along well with the King, the liberal Humboldt was never truly welcomed at the mostly reactionary Royal Court.  In Berlin, he gave a six month series of university lectures on physical geography.  These proved so popular that he gave another series to the public at a local concert hall.  His main purpose was to show that science was a better way to learn about nature.  The Romantic Movement in Germany led to ‘natural philosophers’ who felt that intuition was the best route to understanding, not cold empiricism.  Humboldt showed that science was the more effective approach to knowledge on empirical matters. 

Humboldt tried for years to make another scientific expedition, preferably to Asia.  In 1829 he was granted permission to travel in Russia for six months.  Tsar Nicholas I paid for the trip, hoping that Humboldt’s assessment of mining in the Ural Mountains would prove valuable.  Zoologist C. G. E. Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, a chemist and minerologist, joined the sixty year old Humboldt on the trip.  They spent a month in the Urals, then moved on to Siberia.  After reaching the Chinese border, they returned to Moscow via the Caspian Sea.  In the six months they traveled over 15000 kilometers within Russia, some by river but most by carriage.  The scholarly work produced by the Siberian Expedition was far less extensive than Humboldt’s American work and he left the writing to Ehrenberg and Rose.  They produced a three volume geography of Central Asia.

Humboldt and his friend, mathematician Karl Gauss, set out to organize a global network of magnetic and meteorological monitoring stations.  He used his new contacts in Russia to set up stations across that country and Gauss convinced European governments to do the same.  Humboldt convinced the British to set up stations throughout their Empire and the United States already had a similar network in operation.  This was the first large scale international scientific collaboration and it resulted in many advances in knowledge of magnetic and meteorological phenomena.

Humboldt’s lectures on physical geography in 1828 inspired him to write a monumental work on nature.  Cosmos, Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe took twenty five years to write.  (Using Humboldt’s notes, the fifth and final volume was finished after he died.)  He used all of the sciences to explain everything from the Milky Way Galaxy to microscopic organisms.  Much of it he could illustrate with his own studies.  More than an encyclopedia, Cosmos showed nature as a whole, not a series of unconnected parts.  It also showed science to be intellectually exciting.  The work was well received throughout Europe and the USA.

In 1859, a few months shy of his ninetieth birthday, Humboldt died.  He was given an elaborate state funeral.

Alexander von Humboldt is sometimes criticized for being too general, not focusing on one discipline.  But few scientists can match his contributions to knowledge in any one of the dozens of phenomena he studied.  Among his pioneering contributions are:

• Anthropology: Insightful observations on Native American ethnography and Inca history.  He was the first to suggest an Asiatic origin of Native Americans.
• Astronomy: He helped show the periodicity of meteor showers.
• Botany: Bonpland and Humboldt identified 3500 new species of American plants.
• Climatology: He was the first to extensively map temperatures across continents.
• History: He made a detailed history of the early exploration of the Americas and discovered how ‘America’ became the name of the two continents.
• Human Geography: He showed the connections between the natural environment and the course of nations.
• Geology: Humboldt showed that volcanic activity is an important factor in mountain building and he suggested that volcanoes can be associated with subterranean fault systems.
• Geophysics: Alone and with mathematician Karl Gauss, he studied variations in Earth’s magnetism across the globe.
• Meteorology: With chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, he measured the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
• Oceanography: Humboldt studied the physical properties of ocean waters.
• Physiology: He studied electrical effects on nerves and muscles and the effects of altitude on humans.
• Plant Geography and Ecology: He pioneered the concepts of environmental influences on plants.  

Perhaps more important than his individual contributions, Humboldt showed, especially in Cosmos, the unity of nature.  Few before or since could view the natural world on such a grand scale.

(Note: this biography was originally published in Focus on Geography, v. 46, no. 3 (2001), p. 29-30 and is reprinted here with permission of the American Geographical Society.)

Von Humboldt, Alexander

Published: March 4, 2009, 9:26 pm

Updated: March 4, 2009, 9:26 pm

Lead Author: Jeffrey Lee

Topics:

Ecology Geography Geology Botany Meteorology Natural Sciences Zoology

Content Source: AGS.focusgeo

This article has been reviewed by the following Topic Editor: Peter Saundry

Self portrait of Alexander von Humboldt, 1814. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/article/File:AvHumboldt.jpg])

Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the last true generalists in science.  While generally considered a geographer, he contributed to most of the sciences of the natural environment found today.  Born in Berlin, von Humboldt’s father was Chamberlain to the King, a royal advisor, who died when Alexander was nine years old. As a child, he received a private education and was a slow learner and sickly much of the time.  On his own, though, he loved collecting local plants and animals and reading books on foreign travel and adventure.  He also loved to draw, mostly landscapes.  Typical of the time, science was not part of his schooling; Humboldt was generally self taught in that area.  At sixteen, he attended some lectures on physics and philosophy by a local doctor and then he decided to pursue a career in science.

Humboldt attended several universities, but never for very long.  His mother wanted him to get a job with the Prussian Civil Service and to appease her he ended up at the Hamburg School of Commerce.  There he studied intensely for his courses and with equal intensity his other interests in geology, botany and languages.  He developed a liberal approach to politics and a visit to Paris in 1790, while the ideals of the French Revolution were still apparent, confirmed his convictions.

In 1791 he got a position with the Prussian Academy of Industry and Mines, where he was given a thorough education in geology at the Freiberg Mining Academy.  A. G. Werner, one of the leading geologists of the day, was one of his instructors.  His job with the Bureau of Mines gave him ample opportunity to travel and do scientific investigations.  Some of his studies were mining related but his wide interests led him to do research on many topics in his spare time.  (Throughout his life, he typically slept only three or four hours per night.)  He published an exhaustive study on electrical effects on nerves and muscles, though his conclusions were quickly shown to be incorrect by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, namesake of the unit ‘volt’.  His botanical work, however, brought him lasting acclaim in the scientific world.  He became good friends with Goethe, the leading intellectual of Germany.  While best known for his poetry and plays, Goethe was also a statesman and scientist.  The two learned much from each other.

Humboldt’s mother died in 1796 and he was left a respectable fortune.  He resigned his mining job and set out to go exploring.  He was to join a British expedition to the Nile, but Napoleon invaded Egypt.  Then he was set to join a French voyage around the world, but war with Austria broke out and the government withdrew the funds.  While preparing for this voyage, though, he met Aimé Bonpland, a French botanist.  The two became good friends and decided to set out on their own expedition at Humboldt’s expense.  They convinced the King and Queen of Spain to allow them to visit the Spanish American Colonies, where few foreigners were welcome.  The two sailed to the New World with a collection of the best scientific instruments Humboldt could buy.  As he said in a letter, “I shall try to find out how the forces of nature interact upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life.  In other words, I must find out about the unity of nature.”

Humboldt and Bonpland spent five years in the New World.  In 1799 they arrived in Venezuela.  They explored the Orinoco and Rio Negro Rivers in that colony, mapping and collecting natural history specimens in the rainforest.  Next they traveled in the Andes Mountains in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru.  They spent several months in the city of Quito, mostly exploring the local volcanoes.  Humboldt and Bonpland climbed Chimborazo, then thought to be the highest mountain in the world at 6300 meters.  Humboldt and Bonpland only reached 5900 meters, but that was far higher than any known human had ever been.  This feat brought international attention to Humboldt as an adventurer.  (Bonpland never received the accolades that Humboldt did, presumably because Humboldt was the leader of the expedition.)  Humboldt’s observations in the volcanic region led him to argue forcefully that volcanic activity is a major force in mountain building, a concept not commonly understood at the time.  He also made the observation that altitude and latitude play similar roles in controlling plant types: at the base of the Andes is tropical rainforest, while at the top is tundra-type vegetation.  They then spent a year in Mexico, traveling and studying the geography, economics and politics of that colony.  While sailing from Peru to Mexico, Humboldt took careful measurements of the ocean current there, now known as the Humboldt Current.

Before returning to Europe in 1804, they visited the young United States.  In Philadelphia they were treated warmly by the American Philosophical Society, the leading scientific organization in the country.  They also stayed with President Thomas Jefferson in Washington D.C., a small town still under construction.  Humboldt and Jefferson shared a love of science and had similar political philosophies.  Dolly Madison, wife of then Secretary of State James Madison, said of Humboldt: “We have lately had a great treat in the company of a charming Prussian Baron von Humboldt.  All the ladies say they are in love with him….  He is the most polite, modest, well-informed and interesting traveler we have ever met, and is much pleased with America.”

In their five year journey, Humboldt and Bonpland traveled 10000 kilometers through difficult terrain.  They returned with over 60000 plant specimens, along with geological, ethnographic and zoological collections.  In addition, they had a wealth of astronomical, oceanographic, meteorological and magnetic observations and they corrected the latitude and longitude positions of many geographic features.

Humboldt returned as a grand celebrity in Europe, especially Paris where he lived.  He worked on publications and socialized much, and he wrote between one and two thousand letters each year.  Napoleon never trusted the Prussian Humboldt and the secret police watched him and broke into his home often to copy his papers (with quill pen and ink!).  In spite of this, Paris was the intellectual center Humboldt required and he lived there for twenty-five years after his return from the Americas.  Humboldt never married and it is generally assumed that he was homosexual.  This is based on some love letters he wrote as a young man and the many close relationships he had with men throughout his life.

The publications resulting from the American expedition took thirty years to complete.  The thirty volumes of [[Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland ]]are a mix of scientific results, geographic and economic studies, and travel/adventure books.  He often worked with experts in various fields on the scientific volumes.  Humboldt wrote on climatology, geology, ecology, biogeography, economic geography, oceanography, ethnography, and history.  Bringing the books to fruition broke Humboldt financially; he had to pay for the artists who illustrated them along with the engravings and general printing costs.  Sales of the necessarily pricey books never made up for the expenses.

Bonpland participated in some of the botanical work, but while he was a superb field scientist, he was generally incompetent at desk work.  He became superintendent of gardens for Empress Josephine, had a short marriage, and in 1816 he returned to South America.  He worked as a professor in Argentina and while on an expedition to an area disputed by Argentina and Paraguay, the Paraguayans took him prisoner.  They held him for nine years, despite Humboldt’s diplomatic efforts to get his friend released.  Later, Bonpland settled in Uruguay and seems to have led a happy life living in a mud hut, doing botanical work, and raising children until he died at age 85.  After Humboldt and Bonpland returned to France in 1804, the French government awarded Bonpland a 3000 franc pension as thanks for his achievements; each year Humboldt made sure that it was sent to his friend in South America.

In 1827 Humboldt left Paris for Berlin, serving as Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, Frederick William III.  One of his duties was to report on cultural and scientific matters.  Though he got along well with the King, the liberal Humboldt was never truly welcomed at the mostly reactionary Royal Court.  In Berlin, he gave a six month series of university lectures on physical geography.  These proved so popular that he gave another series to the public at a local concert hall.  His main purpose was to show that science was a better way to learn about nature.  The Romantic Movement in Germany led to ‘natural philosophers’ who felt that intuition was the best route to understanding, not cold empiricism.  Humboldt showed that science was the more effective approach to knowledge on empirical matters.

Humboldt tried for years to make another scientific expedition, preferably to Asia.  In 1829 he was granted permission to travel in Russia for six months.  Tsar Nicholas I paid for the trip, hoping that Humboldt’s assessment of mining in the Ural Mountains would prove valuable.  Zoologist C. G. E. Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, a chemist and minerologist, joined the sixty year old Humboldt on the trip.  They spent a month in the Urals, then moved on to Siberia.  After reaching the Chinese border, they returned to Moscow via the Caspian Sea.  In the six months they traveled over 15000 kilometers within Russia, some by river but most by carriage.  The scholarly work produced by the Siberian Expedition was far less extensive than Humboldt’s American work and he left the writing to Ehrenberg and Rose.  They produced a three volume geography of Central Asia.

Humboldt and his friend, mathematician Karl Gauss, set out to organize a global network of magnetic and meteorological monitoring stations.  He used his new contacts in Russia to set up stations across that country and Gauss convinced European governments to do the same.  Humboldt convinced the British to set up stations throughout their Empire and the United States already had a similar network in operation.  This was the first large scale international scientific collaboration and it resulted in many advances in knowledge of magnetic and meteorological phenomena.

Humboldt’s lectures on physical geography in 1828 inspired him to write a monumental work on nature.  Cosmos, Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe took twenty five years to write.  (Using Humboldt’s notes, the fifth and final volume was finished after he died.)  He used all of the sciences to explain everything from the Milky Way Galaxy to microscopic organisms.  Much of it he could illustrate with his own studies.  More than an encyclopedia, Cosmos showed nature as a whole, not a series of unconnected parts.  It also showed science to be intellectually exciting.  The work was well received throughout Europe and the USA.

In 1859, a few months shy of his ninetieth birthday, Humboldt died.  He was given an elaborate state funeral.

Alexander von Humboldt is sometimes criticized for being too general, not focusing on one discipline.  But few scientists can match his contributions to knowledge in any one of the dozens of phenomena he studied.  Among his pioneering contributions are:

• Anthropology: Insightful observations on Native American ethnography and Inca history.  He was the first to suggest an Asiatic origin of Native Americans.
• Astronomy: He helped show the periodicity of meteor showers.
• Botany: Bonpland and Humboldt identified 3500 new species of American plants.
• Climatology: He was the first to extensively map temperatures across continents.
• History: He made a detailed history of the early exploration of the Americas and discovered how ‘America’ became the name of the two continents.
• Human Geography: He showed the connections between the natural environment and the course of nations.
• Geology: Humboldt showed that volcanic activity is an important factor in mountain building and he suggested that volcanoes can be associated with subterranean fault systems.
• Geophysics: Alone and with mathematician Karl Gauss, he studied variations in Earth’s magnetism across the globe.
• Meteorology: With chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, he measured the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
• Oceanography: Humboldt studied the physical properties of ocean waters.
• Physiology: He studied electrical effects on nerves and muscles and the effects of altitude on humans.
• Plant Geography and Ecology: He pioneered the concepts of environmental influences on plants.  

Perhaps more important than his individual contributions, Humboldt showed, especially in Cosmos, the unity of nature.  Few before or since could view the natural world on such a grand scale.

(Note: this biography was originally published in Focus on Geography, v. 46, no. 3 (2001), p. 29-30 and is reprinted here with permission of the American Geographical Society.)

- See more at: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Von_Humboldt,_Alexander#sthash.YxUkb9RE.dpuf

Von Humboldt, Alexander

Published: March 4, 2009, 9:26 pm

Updated: March 4, 2009, 9:26 pm

Lead Author: Jeffrey Lee

Topics:

Ecology Geography Geology Botany Meteorology Natural Sciences Zoology

Content Source: AGS.focusgeo

This article has been reviewed by the following Topic Editor: Peter Saundry

Self portrait of Alexander von Humboldt, 1814. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/article/File:AvHumboldt.jpg])

Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the last true generalists in science.  While generally considered a geographer, he contributed to most of the sciences of the natural environment found today.  Born in Berlin, von Humboldt’s father was Chamberlain to the King, a royal advisor, who died when Alexander was nine years old. As a child, he received a private education and was a slow learner and sickly much of the time.  On his own, though, he loved collecting local plants and animals and reading books on foreign travel and adventure.  He also loved to draw, mostly landscapes.  Typical of the time, science was not part of his schooling; Humboldt was generally self taught in that area.  At sixteen, he attended some lectures on physics and philosophy by a local doctor and then he decided to pursue a career in science.

Humboldt attended several universities, but never for very long.  His mother wanted him to get a job with the Prussian Civil Service and to appease her he ended up at the Hamburg School of Commerce.  There he studied intensely for his courses and with equal intensity his other interests in geology, botany and languages.  He developed a liberal approach to politics and a visit to Paris in 1790, while the ideals of the French Revolution were still apparent, confirmed his convictions.

In 1791 he got a position with the Prussian Academy of Industry and Mines, where he was given a thorough education in geology at the Freiberg Mining Academy.  A. G. Werner, one of the leading geologists of the day, was one of his instructors.  His job with the Bureau of Mines gave him ample opportunity to travel and do scientific investigations.  Some of his studies were mining related but his wide interests led him to do research on many topics in his spare time.  (Throughout his life, he typically slept only three or four hours per night.)  He published an exhaustive study on electrical effects on nerves and muscles, though his conclusions were quickly shown to be incorrect by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, namesake of the unit ‘volt’.  His botanical work, however, brought him lasting acclaim in the scientific world.  He became good friends with Goethe, the leading intellectual of Germany.  While best known for his poetry and plays, Goethe was also a statesman and scientist.  The two learned much from each other.

Humboldt’s mother died in 1796 and he was left a respectable fortune.  He resigned his mining job and set out to go exploring.  He was to join a British expedition to the Nile, but Napoleon invaded Egypt.  Then he was set to join a French voyage around the world, but war with Austria broke out and the government withdrew the funds.  While preparing for this voyage, though, he met Aimé Bonpland, a French botanist.  The two became good friends and decided to set out on their own expedition at Humboldt’s expense.  They convinced the King and Queen of Spain to allow them to visit the Spanish American Colonies, where few foreigners were welcome.  The two sailed to the New World with a collection of the best scientific instruments Humboldt could buy.  As he said in a letter, “I shall try to find out how the forces of nature interact upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life.  In other words, I must find out about the unity of nature.”

Humboldt and Bonpland spent five years in the New World.  In 1799 they arrived in Venezuela.  They explored the Orinoco and Rio Negro Rivers in that colony, mapping and collecting natural history specimens in the rainforest.  Next they traveled in the Andes Mountains in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru.  They spent several months in the city of Quito, mostly exploring the local volcanoes.  Humboldt and Bonpland climbed Chimborazo, then thought to be the highest mountain in the world at 6300 meters.  Humboldt and Bonpland only reached 5900 meters, but that was far higher than any known human had ever been.  This feat brought international attention to Humboldt as an adventurer.  (Bonpland never received the accolades that Humboldt did, presumably because Humboldt was the leader of the expedition.)  Humboldt’s observations in the volcanic region led him to argue forcefully that volcanic activity is a major force in mountain building, a concept not commonly understood at the time.  He also made the observation that altitude and latitude play similar roles in controlling plant types: at the base of the Andes is tropical rainforest, while at the top is tundra-type vegetation.  They then spent a year in Mexico, traveling and studying the geography, economics and politics of that colony.  While sailing from Peru to Mexico, Humboldt took careful measurements of the ocean current there, now known as the Humboldt Current.

Before returning to Europe in 1804, they visited the young United States.  In Philadelphia they were treated warmly by the American Philosophical Society, the leading scientific organization in the country.  They also stayed with President Thomas Jefferson in Washington D.C., a small town still under construction.  Humboldt and Jefferson shared a love of science and had similar political philosophies.  Dolly Madison, wife of then Secretary of State James Madison, said of Humboldt: “We have lately had a great treat in the company of a charming Prussian Baron von Humboldt.  All the ladies say they are in love with him….  He is the most polite, modest, well-informed and interesting traveler we have ever met, and is much pleased with America.”

In their five year journey, Humboldt and Bonpland traveled 10000 kilometers through difficult terrain.  They returned with over 60000 plant specimens, along with geological, ethnographic and zoological collections.  In addition, they had a wealth of astronomical, oceanographic, meteorological and magnetic observations and they corrected the latitude and longitude positions of many geographic features.

Humboldt returned as a grand celebrity in Europe, especially Paris where he lived.  He worked on publications and socialized much, and he wrote between one and two thousand letters each year.  Napoleon never trusted the Prussian Humboldt and the secret police watched him and broke into his home often to copy his papers (with quill pen and ink!).  In spite of this, Paris was the intellectual center Humboldt required and he lived there for twenty-five years after his return from the Americas.  Humboldt never married and it is generally assumed that he was homosexual.  This is based on some love letters he wrote as a young man and the many close relationships he had with men throughout his life.

The publications resulting from the American expedition took thirty years to complete.  The thirty volumes of [[Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland ]]are a mix of scientific results, geographic and economic studies, and travel/adventure books.  He often worked with experts in various fields on the scientific volumes.  Humboldt wrote on climatology, geology, ecology, biogeography, economic geography, oceanography, ethnography, and history.  Bringing the books to fruition broke Humboldt financially; he had to pay for the artists who illustrated them along with the engravings and general printing costs.  Sales of the necessarily pricey books never made up for the expenses.

Bonpland participated in some of the botanical work, but while he was a superb field scientist, he was generally incompetent at desk work.  He became superintendent of gardens for Empress Josephine, had a short marriage, and in 1816 he returned to South America.  He worked as a professor in Argentina and while on an expedition to an area disputed by Argentina and Paraguay, the Paraguayans took him prisoner.  They held him for nine years, despite Humboldt’s diplomatic efforts to get his friend released.  Later, Bonpland settled in Uruguay and seems to have led a happy life living in a mud hut, doing botanical work, and raising children until he died at age 85.  After Humboldt and Bonpland returned to France in 1804, the French government awarded Bonpland a 3000 franc pension as thanks for his achievements; each year Humboldt made sure that it was sent to his friend in South America.

In 1827 Humboldt left Paris for Berlin, serving as Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, Frederick William III.  One of his duties was to report on cultural and scientific matters.  Though he got along well with the King, the liberal Humboldt was never truly welcomed at the mostly reactionary Royal Court.  In Berlin, he gave a six month series of university lectures on physical geography.  These proved so popular that he gave another series to the public at a local concert hall.  His main purpose was to show that science was a better way to learn about nature.  The Romantic Movement in Germany led to ‘natural philosophers’ who felt that intuition was the best route to understanding, not cold empiricism.  Humboldt showed that science was the more effective approach to knowledge on empirical matters.

Humboldt tried for years to make another scientific expedition, preferably to Asia.  In 1829 he was granted permission to travel in Russia for six months.  Tsar Nicholas I paid for the trip, hoping that Humboldt’s assessment of mining in the Ural Mountains would prove valuable.  Zoologist C. G. E. Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, a chemist and minerologist, joined the sixty year old Humboldt on the trip.  They spent a month in the Urals, then moved on to Siberia.  After reaching the Chinese border, they returned to Moscow via the Caspian Sea.  In the six months they traveled over 15000 kilometers within Russia, some by river but most by carriage.  The scholarly work produced by the Siberian Expedition was far less extensive than Humboldt’s American work and he left the writing to Ehrenberg and Rose.  They produced a three volume geography of Central Asia.

Humboldt and his friend, mathematician Karl Gauss, set out to organize a global network of magnetic and meteorological monitoring stations.  He used his new contacts in Russia to set up stations across that country and Gauss convinced European governments to do the same.  Humboldt convinced the British to set up stations throughout their Empire and the United States already had a similar network in operation.  This was the first large scale international scientific collaboration and it resulted in many advances in knowledge of magnetic and meteorological phenomena.

Humboldt’s lectures on physical geography in 1828 inspired him to write a monumental work on nature.  Cosmos, Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe took twenty five years to write.  (Using Humboldt’s notes, the fifth and final volume was finished after he died.)  He used all of the sciences to explain everything from the Milky Way Galaxy to microscopic organisms.  Much of it he could illustrate with his own studies.  More than an encyclopedia, Cosmos showed nature as a whole, not a series of unconnected parts.  It also showed science to be intellectually exciting.  The work was well received throughout Europe and the USA.

In 1859, a few months shy of his ninetieth birthday, Humboldt died.  He was given an elaborate state funeral.

Alexander von Humboldt is sometimes criticized for being too general, not focusing on one discipline.  But few scientists can match his contributions to knowledge in any one of the dozens of phenomena he studied.  Among his pioneering contributions are:

• Anthropology: Insightful observations on Native American ethnography and Inca history.  He was the first to suggest an Asiatic origin of Native Americans.
• Astronomy: He helped show the periodicity of meteor showers.
• Botany: Bonpland and Humboldt identified 3500 new species of American plants.
• Climatology: He was the first to extensively map temperatures across continents.
• History: He made a detailed history of the early exploration of the Americas and discovered how ‘America’ became the name of the two continents.
• Human Geography: He showed the connections between the natural environment and the course of nations.
• Geology: Humboldt showed that volcanic activity is an important factor in mountain building and he suggested that volcanoes can be associated with subterranean fault systems.
• Geophysics: Alone and with mathematician Karl Gauss, he studied variations in Earth’s magnetism across the globe.
• Meteorology: With chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, he measured the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
• Oceanography: Humboldt studied the physical properties of ocean waters.
• Physiology: He studied electrical effects on nerves and muscles and the effects of altitude on humans.
• Plant Geography and Ecology: He pioneered the concepts of environmental influences on plants.  

Perhaps more important than his individual contributions, Humboldt showed, especially in Cosmos, the unity of nature.  Few before or since could view the natural world on such a grand scale.

(Note: this biography was originally published in Focus on Geography, v. 46, no. 3 (2001), p. 29-30 and is reprinted here with permission of the American Geographical Society.)

- See more at: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Von_Humboldt,_Alexander#sthash.YxUkb9RE.dpuf