Humboldt, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER, BARON VON, one of the greatest of naturalists, was born at Berlin, 14th September 1769. His father, whom he lost when he was not quite ten years of age, was chamberlain to the king of Prussia. He studied at the universities of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, Berlin, and Göttingen; and during his residence at Göttingen (1789-90) he made those visits of scientific exploration, the fruit of which was his first independent work, a treatise on the basalts of the Rhine. In the spring and summer of 1790 he made a tour through Belgium, Holland, England, and France. In June 1791 he entered the Mining Academy at Freiberg, where he enjoyed the instructions of Werner. His eight months' residence here led to the publication of his Flora Subterranea Fribergensis (1793). He was afterwards appointed to an office in the mining department, and spent some years in this capacity, chiefly at the Fichtelgebirge, in Upper Franconia. His researches here resulted in a work on the irritability of the muscular and nervous fibres of animals (1799). The desire of visiting tropical countries, however, led him to resign his office, and devote himself entirely to the study of nature. He spent three months at Jena, where he was the intimate associate of Goethe and Schiller. At Paris he contracted a friendship with Aimé Bonpland, afterwards his companion in many and various scenes. Some time after he obtained permission from the Spanish government to visit all the Spanish settlements in America and the Indian Ocean. He sailed from Corunna along with Bonpland on 5th June 1799. They visited Tenerife, ascended the Peak, and made many scientific observations. On 16th July they arrived at Cumana in South America, and in the course of five years explored a vast extent of territory in what are now Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, as well as in Mexico, which they crossed from west to east. In Havana Humboldt prepared materials afterwards employed in his Essai Politique sur l'Île de Cuba (1826). At Paris he occupied himself in the arrangement of his collections and manuscripts, and jointly with Gay-Lussac made experiments on the chemical constitution of the atmosphere. Having visited Italy, and returned to Berlin, he accompanied Prince Wilhelm of Prussia in 1807 on a political mission to France, and obtained leave from the government of his own country to remain there for the publication of his travels, for which the disturbed state of Germany at that time did not allow proper opportunity. He continued to reside in Paris till 1827. The wish of the king that he should reside in his native country was gratified in 1827, when he proceeded to Berlin, and there, in the winter of 1827-28, he gave lectures on the Cosmos, or physical universe.
In 1829 Humboldt again became a traveller, the Emperor Nicholas then sending out a well-appointed expedition to the north of Asia, to explore the Ural and Altai Mountains, Chinese Dzungaria, and the Caspian Sea. In this expedition Humboldt was accompanied by his two friends Ehrenberg and Rose. Its principal results were the scientific examination of the beds which produce gold and platina, the discovery of diamonds in an extra-tropical region, the astronomical determination of positions, magnetic observations, and geological and botanical collections. The whole journey occupied nine months, and extended to 2320 miles, and is described in a work by Rose (2 vols. 1837-42) and in Humboldt's Asie Centrale (3 vols. 1843). The political changes of the year 1830 led to Humboldt's employment in political services; he was chosen by the king of Prussia to carry to Paris his recognition of Louis-Philippe, and during the ensuing twelve years was frequently sent to Paris to reside for four or five months. He accompanied the king of Prussia also in visits to England, Denmark, &c. During this time he published his Examen Critique de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent (5 vols. 1835-38). Humboldt spent the later years of his long life at Berlin, where he occupied a high position at the Prussian court. His last great work, Cosmos (4 vols. 1845-58), has been unanimously recognised as one of the greatest scientific works ever published, exhibiting in most lucid arrangement many of the principal facts of the physical sciences and their relations to each other. The style, however, is somewhat heavy, and, seen from our present standpoint, the author's views are in many respects defective. The germ of the work was the author's lectures in Berlin in 1828, themselves partially based on his Ansichten der Natur (1808). Humboldt died in his ninetieth year, May 6, 1859.
It is not easy to estimate the amount of Humboldt's contributions to science. The geography of Spanish-America was most imperfectly known previous to his travels there, during which he astronomically determined more than 700 positions, and he bestowed much labour on the preparation of the maps in which his discoveries were exhibited. His barometrical observations were likewise very numerous, as well as his observations on all points connected with meteorology. To him we are indebted for the most important generalisations concerning magnetism and also climate. He obtained distinction also by his labours in the determination of the magnetic equator, and by his observations on electrical eels, and on the respiration of fishes and young crocodiles. The editing and preparing of the great work of the American journey occupied twenty years of his life; and in his work he had the assistance of many of the most eminent scientists of the time—Cuvier, Latreille, Gay-Lussac, Thenard, &c.—as well as the most distinguished artists and engravers. There is but one complete edition of the opus magnum (1807-17), in 30 vols. (20 folio and 10 quarto); the so-called small edition being but excerpts. The title of the whole is Voyages aux Régions Équinoctiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804 par Alexandre de Humboldt et Aimé Bonpland, rédigé par Alexandre de Humboldt; and it falls into six sections, some of which and their parts are quoted as separate works (Relation Historique, Observations de Zoologie, Observations Astronomiques, Physique générale et Géologie, Plantes Équinoctiales, with atlases, essays, &c.). Humboldt is unquestionably one of the great figures of the century, and in private life was remarkable for benevolence and kindness, while his most conspicuous defect was vanity.
See the great biographical work, edited by Bruhns, Alexander von Humboldt: eine wissenschaftliche Biographie (1872; Eng. trans. 1873); and Lord Houghton's Monographs (1873). His correspondence with many of the most eminent men of the time has been published in many separate works—thus, that with Varnhagen (1860), with Von Raumer (1869), with Goethe (1876), with Campe (1877), with his brother Wilhelm (1880).