Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (help·info) (September 14, 1769 – May 6, 1859) was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt traveled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time in a manner generally considered to be a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. Humboldt supported and worked with other scientists, including Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and most notably, Aimé Bonpland, with whom he conducted much of his scientific exploration. Humboldt was born in Berlin in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. His father, Alexander George von Humboldt, was a major in the Prussian Army and belonged to a prominent Pomeranian family and was rewarded for his services during the Seven Years' War with the post of Royal Chamberlain. He married Maria Elizabeth von Colomb in 1766, the widow of Baron von Holwede, and they had two sons. The money of Baron von Holwede, left to his former wife, was instrumental in the funding of Alexander's explorations, contributing more than 70% of Alexander's monetary income. Due to his penchant for collecting and labeling plants, shells, and insects he received the playful title of "the little apothecary". His father died in 1779, after which his mother took care of his education. Destined for a political career, he studied finance during six months at the University of Frankfurt (Oder); and a year later, on April 25, 1789, he matriculated at Göttingen, then eminent for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and J. F. Blumenbach. His vast and varied interests were by this time fully developed, and during a vacation in 1789, he made a scientific excursion up the Rhine, and produced the treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein (Brunswick, 1790). Humboldt's passion for travel was confirmed by friendships formed at Göttingen with Georg Forster, Heyne's son-in-law, the distinguished companion of Captain James Cook on his second voyage. Henceforth his studies and combination of personal talents became to the purpose of preparing himself for a distinctive calling as a scientific explorer. With this view he studied commerce and foreign languages at Hamburg, geology at Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg under A. G. Werner, anatomy at Jena under J. C. Loder, and astronomy and the use of scientific instruments under F. X. von Zach and J. G. Köhler. His researches into the vegetation of the mines of Freiberg led to the publication, in 1793, of his Florae Fribergensis Specimen; and the results of a prolonged course of experiments on the phenomena of muscular irritability, then recently discovered by Luigi Galvani, were contained in his Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser (Berlin, 1797), enriched in the French translation with notes by Blumenbach. In 1794 Humboldt was admitted to the intimacy of the famous Weimar coterie, and contributed (June 7, 1795) to Schiller's new periodical, Die Horen, a philosophical allegory entitled Die Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius. In the summer of 1790 he paid a short visit to England in company with Forster. In 1792 and 1797 he was in Vienna; in 1795 he made a geological and botanical tour through Switzerland and Italy. He had obtained in the meantime official employment: appointed assessor of mines at Berlin, February 29, 1792. Although this service to the state was regarded by him as only an apprenticeship to the service of science, he fulfilled its duties with such conspicuous ability that not only did he rise rapidly to the highest post in his department, but he was also entrusted with several important diplomatic missions. The death of his mother, on November 19, 1796, set him free to follow the bent of his genius, and severing his official connections, he waited for an opportunity to fulfil his long-cherished dream of travel. On the postponement of Captain Baudin's proposed voyage of circumnavigation, which he had been officially invited to accompany, Humboldt left Paris for Marseille with Aimé Bonpland, the designated botanist of the frustrated expedition, hoping to join Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt. Means of transport, however, were not forthcoming, and the two travellers eventually found their way to Madrid, where the unexpected patronage of the minister Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo convinced them to make Spanish America the scene of their explorations. Armed with powerful recommendations, they sailed in the Pizarro from A Coruña, on June 5, 1799, stopped six days on the island of Tenerife to climb Mount Teide, and landed at Cumaná, Venezuela, on July 16. Humboldt visited the mission at Caripe where he found the oil-bird, which he was to make known to science as Steatornis caripensis. Returning to Cumaná, Humboldt observed, on the night of November 11–12, a remarkable meteor shower (the Leonids). He proceeded with Bonpland to Caracas; and in February 1800 they left the coast with the purpose of exploring the course of the Orinoco River. This trip, which lasted four months, and covered 1,725 miles (2,776 km) of wild and largely uninhabited country, had the important result of establishing the existence of the Casiquiare canal (a communication between the water-systems of the rivers Orinoco and Amazon), and of determining the exact position of the bifurcation, as well as documenting the life of several native tribes such as the Maipures and their extinct rivals the Atures. Around March 19, 1800, von Humboldt and Bonpland discovered and captured some electric eels. They both received potentially dangerous electric shocks during their investigations. On November 24, the two friends set sail for Cuba, and after a stay of some months they regained the mainland at Cartagena, Colombia. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena, and crossing the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on January 6, 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey. Their stay there was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and an attempt on Chimborazo. Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m), a world record at the time. The journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru. At Callao, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury on November 9, and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings. A tempestuous sea-voyage brought them to Mexico, where they resided for a year, travelling to different cities. This was followed by a short visit to the United States of America, after which they set sail for Europe from the mouth of the Delaware, and landed at Bordeaux on August 3, 1804. This memorable expedition may be regarded as having laid the foundation of the sciences of physical geography and meteorology. By his delineation (in 1817) of "isothermal lines", he at once suggested the idea and devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries. He first investigated the rate of decrease in mean temperature with the increase in elevation above sea level, and afforded, by his inquiries regarding the origin of tropical storms, the earliest clue to the detection of the more complicated law governing atmospheric disturbances in higher latitudes; while his essay on the geography of plants was based on the then novel idea of studying the distribution of organic life as affected by varying physical conditions. His discovery of the decrease in intensity of Earth's magnetic field from the poles to the equator was communicated to the Paris Institute in a memoir read by him on December 7, 1804, and its importance was attested by the speedy emergence of rival claims. His services to geology were based mainly on his attentive study of the volcanoes of the New World. He showed that they fell naturally into linear groups, presumably corresponding with vast subterranean fissures; and by his demonstration of the igneous origin of rocks previously held to be of aqueous formation, he contributed largely to the elimination of erroneous views, such as Neptunism. The reduction into form and publication of the encyclopædic mass of scientific, political and archaeological material – collected by him during his absence from Europe – was now Humboldt's most urgent desire. After a short trip to Italy with Gay-Lussac for the purpose of investigating the law of magnetic declination, and a sojourn of two and a half years in his native city, he finally, in the spring of 1808, settled in Paris with the purpose of securing the scientific cooperation required for bringing his great work through the press. This colossal task, which he at first hoped would occupy but two years, eventually cost him twenty-one, and even then it remained incomplete. In these early years in Paris, he shared accommodation and a laboratory with his former rival, and now friend, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, both working together on the analysis of gases and the composition of the atmosphere. Humboldt is considered to be the "second discoverer of Cuba" due to all the scientific and social research he conducted on this Spanish colony. During an initial three-month stay at Havana, his first tasks were to properly survey that city and the nearby towns of Guanabacoa, Regla and Bejucal. He befriended Cuban landowner and thinker Francisco Arrango y Parreño; together they visited the Guines area in south Havana, the valleys of Matanzas Province, and the Valley of the Sugar Mills in Trinidad. Those three areas were, at the time, the first frontier of sugar production in the island. During those trips, Humboldt collected statistical information on Cuba's population, production, technology and trade, and with Arrango, made suggestions for enhancing them. He predicted that the agricultural and commercial potential of Cuba was huge and could be vastly improved with proper leadership in the future. After traveling to America, Humboldt returned to Cuba for a second, shorter stay in April 1804. During this time he socialized with his scientific and landowner friends, conducted mineralogical surveys and finished his vast collection of the island's flora and fauna.