Alexander von Humboldt Facts
Alexander von Humboldt Facts
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| Interesting Alexander von Humboldt Facts: |
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| Von Humboldt was born in Berlin to a fairly wealthy and politically well-connected family. |
| These connections and wealth, despite losing his father at an early age, ensured that von Humboldt received a quality education and was given leave to study a wide variety of subjects. |
| Rejecting his original studies that would have propelled him in politics, von Humboldt pursued scientific study from a wide variety of renowned teachers. |
| A chance meeting with someone who had accompanied Captain Cook on his expeditions led von Humboldt to decide to pursue scientific exploration in far-reaching locations. |
| After the cancellation of Captain Nicolas Baudin's attempt at circumnavigating the globe, von Humboldt traveled with another botanist to the Spanish Americas with the support of the Spanish king. |
| Von Humboldt's work on this four-month expedition led him all throughout South America, during which time he discovered different species of birds, located the bifurcation of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, discovered the Casiquiare canal between those two rivers, and met a number of indigenous tribes, all of which he documented. |
| Von Humboldt then traveled to Cuba for further study, and concluded in the United States. |
| Through his vast work on discovering, documenting, and cataloging natural species and features, von Humboldt was the first to propose what would later become the Pangea theory, at least as it pertained to the Atlantic continents. |
| This lengthy expedition became the framework for the studies of geography and meteorology, and von Humboldt's work then became the foundation for understanding isothermal regions of the planet. |
| His body of work was collected and published in a twenty-one-volume set, encompassing a wide variety of science topics and examples. |
| Von Humboldt was one of the first to propose that there was a unity and interconnection between the different fields of science, all of it being related through nature. |
| Until that time, the different fields were mostly isolated in their studies, often of the same phenomenon. |
| Due to his important contributions in various areas of sciences, there are dozens of species, geographical formations, schools and universities, and regional locations named after him. |
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