WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY MERLIN SHELDRAKE WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER OF
THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016 'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson 'Dazzling'
Literary Review 'Brilliant' Sunday Express 'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist 'A
superb biography' The Economist 'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON Mail on
Sunday Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named
after him than anyone else. There are towns rivers mountain ranges the ocean current that
runs along the South American coast there's a penguin a giant squid - even the Mare
Humboldtianum on the moon. His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own
story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest climbed the world's highest volcanoes and
inspired princes and presidents scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him Simon
Bolívar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of
Humboldt and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was as one
contemporary put it 'the greatest man since the Deluge'. Taking us on a fantastic voyage in
his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with
crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt
predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800 and The Invention of Nature traces his
ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science conservation nature writing politics
art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of
thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von
Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.
