It’s time Iowans rediscover Alexander von Humboldt.

Yes, that Humboldt – the Prussian polymath who was friends with Thomas Jefferson and Simón Bolívar; the guy for whom a north Iowa county and city are named.  

Humboldt was born in 1769 and lived until 1859. Iowa’s Humboldt County was named for him in 1851, six years after the state was formed. 

Humboldt was the most widely traveled and most widely read individual of his era. He wrote scores of books, many of which are still in print 160 years after his death. His publications had huge impacts on such 19th-century writers as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin and Walt Whitman, and they continue to inspire 21st-century environmentalists. 

The equivalent of an 18th-century rock star, the young Alexander was good-looking with inquisitive eyes, tousled hair and expressive lips. He hung out with royalty and the world’s leading scientists, while maintaining an empathy for the less fortunate. 

Humboldt’s work was supported by commissions from royalty and other patrons, most of which was spent on research, travel and publishing. He died at age 89, two days after completing his final manuscript.  

Obituaries described Humboldt as “the most remarkable ever born,” and “the greatest man since the deluge,” according to Andrea Wulf’s 2015 biography, “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World.”   

Dolly Madison, wife of James Madison, President Jefferson’s good friend and successor, “professed herself charmed [by Humboldt] and said, ‘all the ladies say they are in love with him,’” Wulf wrote.

She added that Humboldt’s female admirers were mostly disappointed. He did not have intimate relations with women, Wulf reported, but he did have “regular infatuations with” male friends to whom he confessed “undying” and “fervent” love.  

Humboldt is remembered today as an early forecaster of climate change. His many travels were consumed with gathering data from which he made geographic and atmospheric connections that were hugely important. 

“Humboldt revolutionized the way we see the natural world,” Wulf wrote. “He invented isotherms – the lines of temperature and pressure that we see on today’s weather maps.” 

He was the first to suggest that continental drift had separated South America from Africa. He was also “the first scientist to talk about harmful, human-induced climate change, … the first to explain the forest’s ability to enrich the atmosphere with moisture and its cooling effect, as well as its importance to water retention and protection against soil erosion.”

Humboldt’s lifework focused on the extensive data he gathered during two major expeditions. One was to the Americas at the turn of the 18th century; the other was across Russia and Siberia in 1829. 

The Americas venture lasted more than five years from 1799 to 1804. It took Humboldt across South America, Cuba and Mexico. One of his final stops was Washington, D.C., where he met President Jefferson and provided him with valuable background from Spanish sources about the Louisiana Purchase, which the U.S. had just then acquired from France. 

During his travels, Humboldt carried scientific instruments and collected voluminous biologic and geologic specimens, much like explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would do on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean. In fact, Lewis and Clark had just launched their expedition days before Humboldt met with Jefferson in late May 1804.

Humboldt’s much larger expedition of the Americas was sponsored by the king of Spain, to whom Humboldt had explained that his purpose was to discover how “all the forces of nature are interlaced and interwoven,” Wulf wrote.

The explorer would have told Jefferson how he had climbed Chimborazo, which at the time was believed to be the tallest mountain in the world at nearly 21,000 feet; in fact, Wulf noted, its peak is farther from Earth’s center than even Mount Everest because of the earth’s equatorial bulge.

On Chimborazo, Wulf wrote, Humboldt “saw the earth as one great living organism where everything was connected, conceiving a bold new vision of nature that still influences the way we understand the natural world.” 

It’s an important vision for Iowans to understand.