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Alexander von Humboldt
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<p>Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German <a href="/facts/Polymath/eqIfjQRu">polymath</a>, <a href="/facts/Geographer/lQAzvXY0">geographer</a>, <a href="/facts/Natural_history/pSlAvbTX">naturalist</a>, <a href="/facts/List_of_explorers/83eyR34D">explorer</a>, and proponent of <a href="/facts/Romanticism/lfG31kE3">Romantic</a> philosophy and <a href="/facts/Romanticism_in_science/q8xcRLrA">science</a>. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and <a href="/facts/Linguistics/oQuamvf2">linguist</a> <a href="/facts/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt/7tYkJbXT">Wilhelm von Humboldt</a> (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on <a href="/facts/Botany/PaIRoxnb">botanical</a> <a href="/facts/Geography/TRd1Toyo">geography</a> laid the foundation for the field of <a href="/facts/Biogeography/0FV2wM36">biogeography</a>, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern <a href="/facts/Earth%2527s_magnetic_field/73G36wmx">geomagnetic</a> and <a href="/facts/Meteorology/xblFr28q">meteorological</a> monitoring. Humboldt and <a href="/facts/Carl_Ritter/GcTFEBhf">Carl Ritter</a> are both regarded as the founders of modern geography as they established it as an independent scientific discipline. </p><p>Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the <a href="/facts/Americas/hEuUTL4K">Americas</a>, exploring and describing them for the first time from a non-Spanish European scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. </p><p>Humboldt resurrected the use of the word <i>cosmos</i> from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, <i><a href="/facts/Cosmos_(Humboldt_book)/7gKXhwjE">Kosmos</a></i>, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity, which introduced concepts of <a href="/facts/Ecology/YE8upuJU">ecology</a> leading to ideas of <a href="/facts/Environmentalism/hhFsXTLE">environmentalism</a>. In 1800, and again in 1831, he described scientifically, on the basis of observations generated during his travels, local impacts of development causing <a href="/facts/Climate_change/rEN4BDE7">human-induced climate change</a>. </p><p>Humboldt is seen as "the father of ecology" and "the father of environmentalism". </p>