Humboldt and Jefferson explores the relationship between two fascinating personalities: the Prussian explorer, scientist, and geographer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and the American statesman, architect, and naturalist Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). In the wake of his famous expedition through the Spanish colonies in the spring of 1804, Humboldt visited the United States, where he met several times with then-president Jefferson. A warm and fruitful friendship resulted, and the two men corresponded a good deal over the years, speculating together on topics of mutual interest, including natural history, geography, and the formation of an international scientific network. Living in revolutionary societies, both were deeply concerned with the human condition, and each vested hope in the new American nation as a possible answer to many of the deficiencies characterizing European societies at the time. The intellectual exchange between the two over the next twenty-one years touched on the pivotal events of those times, such as the independence movement in Latin America and the applicability of the democratic model to that region, the relationship between America and Europe, and the latest developments in scientific research and various technological projects. Humboldt and Jefferson explores the world in which these two Enlightenment figures lived and the ways their lives on opposite sides of the Atlantic defined their respective convictions.

The enduring influence of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American art, culture, and politics Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was one of the most influential scientists and thinkers of his age. A Prussian-born geographer, naturalist, explorer, and illustrator, he was a prolific writer whose books graced the shelves of American artists, scientists, philosophers, and politicians. Humboldt visited the United States for six weeks in 1804, engaging in a lively exchange of ideas with such figures as Thomas Jefferson and the painter Charles Willson Peale. It was perhaps the most consequential visit by a European traveler in the young nation's history, one that helped to shape an emerging American identity grounded in the natural world. In this beautifully illustrated book, Eleanor Jones Harvey examines how Humboldt left a lasting impression on American visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics. She shows how he inspired a network of like-minded individuals who would go on to embrace the spirit of exploration, decry slavery, advocate for the welfare of Native Americans, and extol America's wilderness as a signature component of the nation's sense of self. Harvey traces how Humboldt's ideas influenced the transcendentalists and the landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and laid the foundations for the Smithsonian Institution, the Sierra Club, and the National Park Service. Alexander von Humboldt and the United States looks at paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts, and features works by leading American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Church, and Samuel F. B. Morse. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC September 18, 2020–January 3, 2021

Cornell University history and American studies professor Aaron Sachs offers a masterly intellectual history of the impact of 19th-century explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American culture and science.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Transcultural Literary Studies: Politics, Theory, and Literary Analysis" that was published in Humanities

Alexander von Humboldt was the most admired scientist of his day. But the achievements for which he was most celebrated in his lifetime always fell short of perfection. When he climbed the Chimborazo, then believed to be the highest mountain in the world, he did not quite reach the top; he established the existence of the Casiquiare canal, between the great water systems of the Orinoco and the Amazon, but this had been well known to local people; and his magisterial work, Cosmos, was left unfinished. This was no coincidence. Humboldt's pursuit of an all-encompassing, immersive approach to science was a way of finding limits: of nature and of the scientist's own self. A Longing for Wide and Unknown Things portrays a scientific life lived in the era of German Romanticism - a time of radical change, where the focus on the individual placed a new value on feeling, and the pursuit of personal desires. As Humboldt himself admitted, he 'would have sailed to the remotest South Seas, even if it hadn't fulfilled any scientific purpose whatever'.

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), an early pioneer in the philosophy of language, linguistic and educational theory, was not only one of the first European linguists to identify human language as a rule-governed system –the foundational premise of Noam Chomsky's generative theory – or to reflect on cognition in studying language; he was also a major scholar of Indigenous American languages. However, with his famous naturalist brother Alexander 'stealing the show,' Humboldt's contributions to linguistics and anthropology have remained understudied in English until today. Drechsel's unique book addresses this gap by uncovering and examining Humboldt's influences on diverse issues in nineteenth-century American linguistics, from Peter S. Duponceau to the early Boasians, including Edward Sapir. This study shows how Humboldt's ideas have shaped the field in multiple ways. Shining a light on one of the early innovators of linguistics, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the field.

The incalculable influence of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) on biology, botany, geology, and meteorology deservedly earned him the reputation as the world’s most illustrious scientist before Charles Darwin. Humboldt’s breath-taking explorations of Mexico and South America from 1799 to 1804 are akin to Europe’s second “discovery” of the New World – this time, a scientific one. His Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain is a foundational document about Mexico and its cultures and is still widely consulted by anthropologists, geographers, and historians. In Humboldt’s Mexico, Myron Echenberg presents a straightforward guide with historical and cultural context to Humboldt’s travels in Mexico. Humboldt packed a lifetime of scientific studies into one daunting year, and soon after published a four-volume account of his findings. His adventures range widely from inspections of colonial silver mines and hikes to the summits of volcanoes to meticulous examination of secret Spanish colonial archives in Mexico City and scientific discussions of archaeological sites of pre-Hispanic Indigenous cultures. Echenberg traces Humboldt’s journey, as described in his publications, his diary, and other writings, across the heartland of Mexico, while also pursuing Humboldt’s life, his science, his experiences, his influence on scholars of his time and after, and the various efforts by others to honour and at times to denigrate his legacy. Part history, part travelogue, and always highly readable and informative, Humboldt’s Mexico is an engaging account of a gifted scientist and visionary that ranges across topics as diverse and broad as natural history was in his era.

Volume 3 of 3. This 3-volume anthology of 194 articles (with 102 maps and illustrations) published between 1974 and 1999 in We Proceeded On, The quarterly journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Contributors include Stephen Ambrose, John Logan Allen, Paul Russell Cutright among other professional and amateur Lewis and Clark scholars. Vol. 1 ISBN 1582187614, Vol. 2 ISBN 1582187630 Vol. 3 1582187657.