Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

Across North America, the name Humboldt graces towns, counties, bays, lakes, mountains, and parks, including Humboldt Park here in Chicago. In fact, around the world there are more places named after Humboldt than any other person, not to mention nearly three hundred plants and more than one hundred animals. In this study group, we will answer the question, who is this Humboldt? Alexander von Humboldt, born in Prussia in 1769, was the visionary naturalist and polymath whose discoveries forever changed the way we understand the natural world. During his lifetime, he may have been the most famous man in the world outside of Napoleon. Now somewhat forgotten, Andrea Wulf in her biography, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (Knopf, 2015) brings his extraordinary life back into focus. We explore his holistic vision of nature as a network of forces and interrelationships, his prediction of human-induced climate change, his daring expeditions to South America and the steppes of Siberia, his relationships with other great men of his age such as Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, and Simon Bolivar, and his influence on those that followed such as Darwin, Thoreau, and John Muir. Join us as we rediscover the life and thought of this remarkable figure.