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Hello Darwin described him as the greatest scientific traveler who's ever lived.

Gerta declared that one learned more from an hour in his company than eight days of studying

books and even Napoleon was envious of his celebrity.

He is the Prussian scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

At the time of his death in 1859 the year Darwin published on the origin of species, Humboldt was the most famous scientist

in Europe.

Add to this shipwreck's daring tropical adventures, Spanish American revolutionary politics,

and his determination to prove that one man

himself could contain the knowledge of the Cosmos and you have the ingredients

from one of the more extraordinary lives lived in Europe in the 18th and 19th century.

But what's Humboldt's true position in the historyth and 19th centuries.

But what's Humboldt's true position in the history of science?

How did he lose the fame and celebrity he once enjoyed?

And why is he now perhaps more important than he's ever been?

With me to discuss Alexander von Hmelt are Patricia Farah,

fellow of Claire College at Cambridge University,

Jason Wilson, professor of Latin American literature at University College London,

and Jim Seacord, professor in the Department of History London and Jim C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C.

Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

James Wilson, we're talking about a man massively great and massively important in his time,

...