Alexander von Humboldt

Humboldt’s painting of Chimborazo

I missed the start of In Our Time last week. Fortunately for me Juice picked it up, so I’ve been listening to a discussion about Alexander von Humboldt. It’s very interesting. Humboldt was an astonishing man, and possibly the last all-round scientist rather than a specialist in a field. Yet he isn’t that well known. All sorts of reasons are put forward. One they may have overlooked is the inaccessibility of South America where he made his most famous observations.

They mention this a bit, he’s one of the first non-Spaniards there and that the revolutions meant he was the only source for the region for a long while. From a European perspective though I still don’t think that South America has made much impression – which is very much Europe’s loss. I don’t know if the view from North America is different.

The programme went out Thursday, so you can only pick up the MP3 version for today. The Real Player version should stay accessible in the archive though.