Oren Williams
Professor Parker
PHI 123
May 01, 2016
Alexander von Humboldt Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian explorer, who was born in Berlin on the 14th of September, 1769. He was also a naturalist and a Prussian geographer. He had an influential impact on romantic philosophy and science. Humboldt traveled all throughout Latin America exploring and describing what he saw in journals he recorded his notes on. This was also the first time he described his experiences in a scientific point of view. The journals he wrote are now published and cover 21 years of his exploring. Humboldt’s father, Alexander Georg von Humboldt, was a major in the Prussian Army. He married Maria Elisabeth Colomb in 1776. She was a very well educated woman and was also a widow. They had three children, Alexander being the youngest. The father had died in 1799. After his death, their mother was expected to become a civil servant of the Prussian state. Money was involved and left after her death. Alexander took accept ion and it helped him along the way to start his exploration.
His passion for travel and exploring was a big thing. He devoted himself to preparation into becoming a scientific explorer. At the University of Hamburg, he studied commerce and foreign languages and also geology at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology. He then graduated from Friedberg and was offered a job as an inspector in Bayreuth. During his period as a mine inspector, Humboldt demonstrated his deep concern for the men he saw and met laboring in the mines. He was nice enough to open a free school for miners where paid out of his own pocket. It became an unchartered government school for labor and training.
When Humboldt requested authorization from the crown to travel to Spanish America, it was given positive response. He made it possible because most importantly, he aided himself by having his own way and own funding. Spain under the Hapsburg monarchy had guarded its realms against foreigner travelers and intruders. From then on, the Bourbon monarch was open to his proposal. Humboldt was granted access to crown officials and written documentation on Spain's empire. With his experience working as for the absolutist Prussian monarchy as a government mining official, Humboldt had both the experience and academic training of working well within a bureaucratic structure.
On June 5th, 1799 he set sail to Venezuela. They were set to reach Havana, but an outbreak of typhoid caused the captain to change course and land in Cumana. At first he really didn’t map out or set up a plan to where or what he wanted to explore when it really came to it. In the beginning he hired an Indian as a guide to help him get started where he was. He visited Caripe, where he found the oilbird exploring inside the Guacharo Cave. When he returned back to Cumana, he studied a remarkable meteor shower during the night.
On the 24th of November in 1800, Humboldt and Bonpland set sail for Cuba, landing on December 19, where they met another fellow botanist and plant collector John Fraser. Humboldt is considered to be the "second discoverer of Cuba" due to the scientific and social research he conducted during his time on the Spanish colony. On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and Bonpland stopped once again in Cuba. While being there, Humboldt collected different types of material plants and had written down lots of notes.
On February 15th, 1803 they arrived on the west coast part of Acapulco, Mexico. They had made it into Mexico City and had spent a year traveling to other different cities in the central and northern region. Many of the routes they took were through mountains and tough terrain. Humboldt took measurements of elevation while going on high elevated areas. At the time Mexico City was the largest city in the Americas. Humboldt was impressed in what he had saw there and counted Mexico as a modern place to be.
Humboldt spent time at the Valenciana silver mine in Guanajuato, northern New Spain, at the time the most important in the Spanish empire there was. He could have simply examined the geology of the fabulously rich mine, but he then took the opportunity to study the entire mining complex as well as analyze mining statistics of its output while he was there. Although he himself was a trained geologist and mining inspector, he drew in on mining experts in Mexico. He met many other inspectors such as Andrés Manuel del Rio, whom he knew before while they both attended Freiberg.
In 1804 Humboldt had made a short stop in the United States. Arriving in Philadelphia, he met some of major scientists at the time. Before coming, he wrote to Thomas Jefferson who was the president and was also a scientist himself. It was said that they both held many intense conversations not only on scientific terms but also about Humboldt’s trip to Spain. Humboldt had made the most accurate maps of Mexico and had many copious notes, which later became the basis for his essay on the Political Kingdom of New Spain, which he allowed the North American officials to copy. Gallatin, in turn, supplied Humboldt with information he sought on the United States.
Humboldt was a generous gentleman toward his friends and also mentored young scientists. He and Bonpland parted ways after their return to Europe. Humboldt had taken a large task of publishing the results of their Latin American expedition at Humboldt's expense, but he included Bonpland as co-author on the nearly published 30 volumes. Bonpland returned to Latin America. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then moved to the countryside near the border with Paraguay. He was accused of "agricultural espionage" and also threatening Paraguay's virtual monopoly on the cultivation of yerba mate. The forces of Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the headman of Paraguay, abducted Bonpland after killing his estate workers. Humboldt and Bonpland maintained a warm correspondence about science and politics together until Bonpland's death in 1858.
Most of Humboldt’s personal life remains unknown. He destroyed his personal letters and were never saved or published. Many say he had a regarious personality, but most have seemed that he had social alienation. This is what probably drove his passion to escape his issue. He had also never married. But because he was famous and everybody knew who he was at the time he was approached and had sexual intercourses with many women. And these women were not just any; they were beautiful and also famous. His life was said to be marked by a pattern of intense male friendships, which sometimes tipped over into romantic passion. In 1908, a sexual researcher named Paul Näcke, gathered reminiscences from homosexuals including Humboldt's friend the botanist Karl Bolle, at the tiem who was then 90 years old. Some of the material was incorporated by Magnus Hirschfeld into his 1914 study Homosexuality in Men and Women. However, speculations about Humboldt's private life and possible homosexuality continue to remain a fractious issue amongst scholars, particularly as earlier biographers had portrayed him as "a largely asexual, Christ-like Humboldt figure suitable as a national idol."
On the 24th of February in 1857, Humboldt suffered a minor stroke, which occurred to him not feeling or having any symptoms. It was not until the winter of 1858 to 1859 that his strength began to decline. On May 6th 1859, he died peacefully in Berlin at the age of 89. His last words were reported to be "How glorious these sunbeams are! They seem to call Earth to the Heavens!" His remains were conveyed in state through the streets of Berlin, in a hearse pulled by six horses. Royal chamberlains led the cortege, each charged with carrying a pillow with Humboldt's medals and other decorations of honor and his achievements. Humboldt's extended family, descendants of his brother Wilhelm, walked in the procession. Humboldt's coffin was received by the prince-regent at the door of the cathedral. He was interred at the family resting-place at Tegel, alongside his brother Wilhelm and sister-in-law Caroline.

Works Citied
Kellner, Charlotte L. "Alexander Von Humboldt." Http://www.britannica.com/. N.p., n.d. Web.
Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World. N.p.: n.p., n.d.Print.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Humboldt’s Gift." The New Yorker. N.p., n.d. Web.
Wulf, Andrea. "Alexander Von Humboldt: The Man Who Made Nature Modern." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
Thubron, Colin. "‘The Invention of Nature,’ by Andrea Wulf." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2015. Web. 04 May 2016.