Naturalist of the month

Alexander von Humboldt was much more than a great botanist. He excelled in a wide range of disciplines: geology, mining engineering, astronomy, geography… and was the quintessential explorer of European Romanticism. After his mother’s death, he inherited a great fortune that enabled him to travel, between 1799 and 1804, first with the French naturalist Aimé Bonpland and, from 1802 onwards, with the Ecuadorian Carlos de Montúfar, more than ten thousand kilometres across South America, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. He navigated up the Orinoco River, proving its connection with the Amazon. He crossed the Andes into Ecuador and climbed Chimborazo, then believed to be the highest mountain in the world. Between 1804 and 1827 he settled in Paris, where he published, using the material collected during his expedition, the thirty-three volumes of Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent (1816–1831). In 1827 he returned to Berlin, where he remained except for a new expedition commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I in 1829, which took him to the Ural Mountains and Siberia, as far as the border with China.

His legacy is remarkable. The 4,500 new species described by him and Bonpland were compiled by Karl Sigismund Kunth in the seven volumes of Nova Genera et species plantarum (1816–1825); his Essai sur la géographie des plantes (1805) established him as one of the pioneers of ecology; in oceanography, he is credited with describing the Pacific Ocean current that now bears his name. He laid the foundations of physical geography, seismology, and meteorological networks. In his final years, he brought together all the scientific knowledge of his time in his most famous work: Kosmos (1845–1862).

A liberal thinker and a committed abolitionist, Humboldt maintained a close friendship with Goethe from his youth and was connected with leaders of the French Revolution. He also served as an adviser to the King of Prussia and became friends with U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, the Tsar of Russia, and Simón Bolívar.

Seventeen animal species, more than 300 plant species, and a genus of legumes (Humboldtia) have been named in his honour. Countless geographical features across several continents, as well as a lunar sea and two asteroids, also bear his name. At Marimurtra, the lookout tower located at the northeastern end of the third garden is dedicated to him.