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go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. broadcasts. Moon, did but thy rays their last upon mine anguish gaze?

Beside this desk at dead of night, oft have I watched to hail thy light.

Then, Pensive friend, O a book and scroll with soothing power thy radiant stole, in thy dear light,

Ah, might I climb freely, some mountain height sublime.

Gerta's Faust is possibly the most mountain height sublime.

Gerta's fouse is possibly the most famous work of literature in the world. Curiously Gerta's lines could equally well apply to his close friend,

20 years his junior, the explorer,

geographer, naturalist, scientist, writer,

and guiding light of the 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt.

It's often said scientists can see further because they stood on the shoulders of giants.

Humboldt saw further because on his travels he scrambled probably higher than any person had ever been before

on the flanks of the South American volcano Chimborazzo and what he beheld changed his view of the world.

I'm Roland Pease and I've long known of Humboldt because of what Darwin wrote of him in later years.

My admiration of his famous personal narrative, part of which I almost know by heart, determined me to travel in distant

countries and led me to volunteer as naturalist in Her Majesty's ship, The Beagle.

Because of that Darwin connection, I've always wanted to know more about

Alexander von Humboldt and the historian Andrea Wolf has made that possible a pleasure indeed

with her new biography, the invention of nature, which reveals Humboldt's

extraordinary influence in the 19th century, a friend of princes and presidents sought out

by the world scientists an influence on poets a changer of the world indeed

...