The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was once the most famous man in Europe bar Napoleon. And if you judge a man by his friends (as you should), how about Goethe, Schiller, Simon Bolivar, Cuvier, Lamarck, Laplace, Guy-Lussac and Jefferson? And that is only the start of the supper list.
So what happened? Why is he forgotten? For the best of reasons: because he contributed so much to so many fields of intellectual interest that are now separate scientific disciplines. And also because most of his ideas that were once startlingly original are now commonplace. We take it for granted that there are vast rivers running through the seas (but at least the Humboldt Current is named after him). He was the first oceanographer. He was the first ecologist.
The idea that as you climb up a mountain you make your way towards the poles, in terms of plant life, was his (a thought that came to him on his great climb of Chimborazo in the Andes, then by far the highest ascent that any human being had ever achieved).
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