![]() ![]() Humboldt's mother expected them to become civil servants of the Prussian state. She had high ambitions for Alexander and his older brother Wilhelm, hiring excellent tutors, who were Enlightenment thinkers, including Kantian physician Marcus Herz and botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow, who became one of the most important botanists in Germany. Īlexander Georg died in 1779, leaving the brothers Humboldt in the care of their emotionally distant mother. ![]() Her first-born son, Wilhelm and Alexander's half-brother, was something of a ne'er do well, not often mentioned in the family history. Alexander Georg and Maria Elisabeth had three children: a daughter, who died young, and then two sons, Wilhelm and Alexander. In 1766, Alexander Georg married Maria Elisabeth Colomb, a well-educated woman and widow of Baron Hollwede, with whom she had a son. He first married the daughter of Prussian General Adjutant Schweder. He profited from the contract to lease state lotteries and tobacco sales. At age 42, Alexander Georg was rewarded for his services in the Seven Years' War with the post of royal chamberlain. Although not one of the titled gentry, he was a major in the Prussian Army, who had served with the Duke of Brunswick. Humboldt's father, Alexander Georg von Humboldt, belonged to a prominent Pomeranian family. He was baptized as a baby in the Lutheran faith, with the Duke of Brunswick serving as godfather. Early life, family and education Humboldt as a boy with his widowed mother, Maria Elisabeth (Colomb) von HumboldtĪlexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin in Prussia on 14 September 1769. Humboldt is seen as "the father of ecology" and "the father of environmentalism". In 1800, and again in 1831, he described scientifically, on the basis of observations generated during his travels, local impacts of development causing human-induced climate change. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity, which introduced concepts of ecology leading to ideas of environmentalism. Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. īetween 17, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern Western scientific point of view. ![]() Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). ![]() Markus Herz, Carl Ludwig Willdenow, Abraham Gottlob Wernerĭarwin, Wallace, Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson, Muir, Irving, Ida Laura Pfeiffer, Frederic Edwin Church, Ernst Haeckel, George Perkins Marshįriedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – ) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. University of Frankfurt (Oder) (no degree)īiogeography, Kosmos (1845–1862), Humboldt Current, magnetic storm, Humboldtian science, Berlin Romanticism Freiberg School of Mines ( diploma, 1792) ![]()
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