---
title: "Alexander von Humboldt"
chunk: 10/18
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

During his lifetime Humboldt became one of the most famous men in Europe. Academies, both native and foreign, were eager to elect him to their membership, the first being The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, which he visited at the tail end of his travel through the Americas. He was elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1805.
Over the years other learned societies in the U.S. elected him a member, including the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA) in 1816; the Linnean Society of London in 1818; the New York Historical Society in 1820; a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822; the American Ethnological Society (New York) in 1843; and the American Geographical and Statistical Society, (New York) in 1856. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810. The Royal Society, whose president Sir Joseph Banks had aided Humboldt as a young man, now welcomed him as a foreign member.
After Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, the Mexican government recognized him with high honors for his services to the nation. In 1827, the first President of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria granted Humboldt Mexican citizenship and in 1859, the President of Mexico, Benito Juárez, named Humboldt a hero of the nation (benemérito de la nación). The gestures were purely honorary; he never returned to the Americas following his expedition.
Importantly for Humboldt's long-term financial stability, King Frederick William III of Prussia conferred upon him the honor of the post of royal chamberlain, without at the time exacting the duties. The appointment had a pension of 2,500 thalers, afterwards doubled. This official stipend became his main source of income in later years when he exhausted his fortune on the publications of his research. Financial necessity forced his permanent relocation to Berlin in 1827 from Paris. In Paris he found not only scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the lion of the salons and as the savant of the Institut de France and the observatory.

On 12 May 1827 he settled permanently in Berlin, where his first efforts were directed towards the furtherance of the science of terrestrial magnetism. In 1827, he began giving public lectures in Berlin, which became the basis for his last major publication, Kosmos (1845–62).
For many years, it had been one of his favorite schemes to secure, by means of simultaneous observations at distant points, a thorough investigation of the nature and law of "magnetic storms" (a term invented by him to designate abnormal disturbances of Earth's magnetism). The meeting at Berlin, on 18 September 1828, of a newly formed scientific association, of which he was elected president, gave him the opportunity of setting on foot an extensive system of research in combination with his diligent personal observations. His appeal to the Russian government, in 1829, led to the establishment of a line of magnetic and meteorological stations across northern Asia. Meanwhile, his letter to the Duke of Sussex, then (April 1836) president of the Royal Society, secured for the undertaking, the wide basis of the British dominions.
The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, observes, "Thus that scientific conspiracy of nations which is one of the noblest fruits of modern civilization was by his exertions first successfully organized". However, earlier examples of international scientific cooperation exist, notably the 18th-century observations of the transits of Venus.
In 1856, U.S. diplomat John Bigelow published Memoir of the Life and Public Services of John Charles Fremont. He dedicated it "To Alexander von Humboldt, this memoir of one whose genius he was among the first to discover and acknowledge, is respectfully inscribed by The Author."
In 1869, the 100th year of his birth, Humboldt's fame was so great that cities all over America celebrated his birth with large festivals. In New York City, a bust of his head was unveiled in Central Park.
Scholars have speculated about the reasons for Humboldt's declining renown among the public. Sandra Nichols has argued that there are three reasons for this:

First, a trend towards specialization in scholarship. Humboldt was a generalist who connected many disciplines in his work. Today, academics have become more and more focused on narrow fields of work. Humboldt combined ecology, geography and even social sciences.
Second, a change in writing style. Humboldt's works, which were considered essential to a library in 1869, had flowery prose that fell out of fashion. One critic said they had a "laborious picturesqueness". Humboldt himself said that, "If I only knew how to describe adequately how and what I felt, I might, after this long journey of mine, really be able to give happiness to people. The disjointed life I lead makes me hardly certain of my way of writing".
Third, a rising anti-German sentiment in the late 1800s and the early 1900s due to heavy German immigration to the United States and later World War 1. On the eve of the 1959 hundredth anniversary of the death of Humboldt, the government of West Germany planned significant celebrations in conjunction with nations that Humboldt visited.

== Expedition in Russia, 1829 ==