---
title: "Alexander von Humboldt"
chunk: 14/18
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:46:06.431380+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Humboldt was generous toward his friends and mentored young scientists. He and Bonpland parted ways after their return to Europe, and Humboldt largely took on the task of publishing the results of their Latin American expedition at Humboldt's expense, but he included Bonpland as co-author on the nearly 30 published volumes. Bonpland returned to Latin America, settling in Buenos Aires, Argentina, then moved to the countryside near the border with Paraguay. The forces of Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the strong man of Paraguay, abducted Bonpland after killing Bonpland's estate workers. Bonpland was accused of "agricultural espionage" and of threatening Paraguay's virtual monopoly on the cultivation of yerba mate.
Despite international pressure, including the British government and Simón Bolívar's, along with European scientists including Humboldt, Francia kept Bonpland prisoner until 1831. He was released after nearly 10 years in Paraguay. Humboldt and Bonpland maintained a warm correspondence about science and politics until Bonpland's death in 1858.
During Humboldt's time in Paris, he met in 1818 the young and brilliant Peruvian student of the Royal Mining School of Paris, Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz. Subsequently, Humboldt acted as a mentor of the career of this promising Peruvian scientist. Another recipient of Humboldt's aid was Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), who was directly aided with needed cash from Humboldt, assistance in securing an academic position, and help with getting his research on zoology published. Agassiz sent him copies of his publications and went on to gain considerable scientific recognition as a professor at Harvard. Agassiz delivered an address to the Boston Society of Natural History in 1869, on the centenary of his patron's birth. When Humboldt was an elderly man, he aided another young scholar, Gotthold Eisenstein, a brilliant, young, Jewish mathematician in Berlin, for whom he obtained a small crown pension and whom he nominated for the Academy of Science.
Humboldt's popular writings inspired many scientists and naturalists, including Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, George Perkins Marsh, Ernst Haeckel, Ida Laura Pfeiffer as well as brothers Richard and Robert Schomburgk[180] and Robert, Adolf, and Hermann Schlagintweit.
Humboldt carried on correspondence with many contemporaries and two volumes of letters to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense have been published.
Charles Darwin made frequent reference to Humboldt's work in his Voyage of the Beagle, where Darwin described his own scientific exploration of the Americas. In one note, he placed Humboldt first on the "list of American travellers". Darwin's work was influenced by Humboldt's writing style as well. Darwin's sister remarked to him "you had, probably from reading so much of Humboldt, got his phraseology and the kind of flowery French expressions he uses".
When Darwin's Journal was published, he sent a copy to Humboldt, who responded, "You told me in your kind letter that, when you were young, the manner in which I studied and depicted nature in the torrid zones contributed toward exciting in you the ardour and desire to travel in distant lands. Considering the importance of your work, Sir, this may be the greatest success that my humble work could bring." In his autobiography, Darwin recalled, reading "with care and profound interest Humboldt's Personal Narrative" and finding it one of the two most influential books on his work, which stirred in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science".
Humboldt would later reveal to Darwin in the 1840s that he had been deeply interested in Darwin's grandfather's poetry. Erasmus Darwin had published the poem The Loves of the Plants in the early 1800s. Humboldt praised the poem for combining nature and imagination, a theme that permeated Humboldt's own work.

A number of nineteenth-century artists travelled to Latin America, following in the footsteps of Humboldt, painting landscapes and scenes of everyday life. Johann Moritz Rugendas, Ferdinand Bellermann, and Eduard Hildebrandt were three important European painters. Frederic Edwin Church was the most famous landscape painter in the U.S. in the nineteenth century. His paintings of Andean volcanoes that Humboldt climbed helped make Church's reputation. His 5 foot by 10 foot painting entitled The Heart of the Andes "caused a sensation" when it was completed. Church had hoped to ship the painting to Berlin to show the painting to Humboldt, but Humboldt died a few days after Church's letter was written. Church painted Cotopaxi three times, twice in 1855 and then in 1859 in eruption.
George Catlin, most famous for his portraits of North American Indians and paintings of life among various North American tribes, also travelled to South America, producing a number of paintings. He wrote to Humboldt in 1855, sending him his proposal for South American travels. Humboldt replied, thanking him and sending a memorandum helping guide his travels.
Ida Laura Pfeiffer, one of the first female travelers who completed two trips around the world from 1846 to 1855, followed in Humboldt's footsteps. The two explorers met in Berlin in 1851 before Pfeiffer's second tour and again in 1855 when she returned to Europe. Humboldt provided Pfeiffer with an open letter of introduction in which he bade anyone who knew of his name to assist Madame Pfeiffer for her "inextinguishable energy of character which she has everywhere shown, to wheresoever's she has been called or better put, driven by her unconquerable passion to study nature and man."

== Other aspects of Humboldt's life and career ==

=== Humboldt and the Prussian monarchy ===