Question

Contribution of Humboldt in the development of geography

Answer 1

Humboldt kaun tha bhai

Answer 2

1769–1859), the most famous German of his time, was celebrated as a geographer, explorer, and naturalist; he was less well known for his valuable contributions to the development of the social sciences. He came from a Pomeranian family that had been lately ennobled. After the early death of his father, a major in the Prussian Army, his bourgeois mother ceased to keep up the family’s connections with the court; instead, she employed excellent private tutors to set her two sons on the road traveled by the bour geois elite—the sciences. Humboldt studied at Frankfurt on the Oder, Göttingen, Hamburg, and Freiberg (in Saxony). C. W. Dohm, Karl Ludwig Willdenow, and Georg Forster, his principal teachers, awakened his interest in political and botanical geography and in exploration. In his youth he also associated with Goethe, Schiller, and many other writers.

With this background he was exceedingly well prepared for his first voyage of exploration, which took place between 1799 and 1804. He was accompanied on this voyage by Aimé Bonpland, the French physician and botanist. Humboldt explored the territories of what are now Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, sailed up the Casiquiare and determined its longitude and latitude, climbed Mount Chimborazo to the height of 17,900 feet, and suggested various improvements in mining technology and other aspects of the economy to the Spanish colonial authorities.

After a visit to the United States, where he met not only various scientists in Philadelphia but also President Thomas Jefferson, he returned to Europe. He then settled in Paris, where he proceeded to evaluate the results of his expedition and to prepare for a new project of exploration in Asia. This latter expedition did not take place until 1829, after he had spent two years in Berlin.

The preparation, execution, and evaluation of Humboldt’s expeditions were exemplary and won him world fame. The 23 volumes of his travel descriptions (1805–1834) are the most comprehensive ever published by a private individual. He collaborated with German, French, and British scholars to produce the last major achievement of the republic of letters of the eighteenth century and so combined in characteristic fashion the idée encyclopé-dique with his belief in the division of labor among specialists.