-made his name with 1799-1804 expedition to Spanish America

-discovered massive data in animal biology, botany, geology, meteorology

-to present it, had to invent isothermal lines

-famously drew map of Andean volcano of Chimborazo

-then believed to be largest mountain in the world

-incl. vast amounts of data from plant geography to altitude to humidity to air pressure

-wrote about the people and their sentiments

-and criticizing colonialism and assoc abuses, esp slavery

-collected massive amount of data

-spent rest of his life publishing this revolutionary data

-wrote about this expedition, published books about it

-helped to popularize science in terms comprehensible by laypeople

-and made him, for over half a century, int'l face of science

-famously Venezuelan freedom fighter Simon Bolivar declared, "The real discoverer of South America was Humboldt, since his work was more useful for our people than the work of all conquerors"

-didn't want to rest, despite having been revolutionary by 1804 regardless

-having collected data of andes, wanted to do the same for Himalayas

-and found Europe stifling

-to visit Himalayas required approval of BEIC

-company so powerful it was a state

-already suspicious of letting non-British foreigners visit India

-reputation as a critic of colonialism

-spoke of "cruelty of the Europeans"

-in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, he compared South American colonialism to Indian colonialism

-they fear he'll expose Raj colonialism

-they delayed it,

-Humboldt lived in Paris and London

-where he organized his South American data

-published it and entered into long correspondences with other European scientists

-in 1822, friend George Canning was appointed the Governor-General of The British Raj

-secured permissions for him to travel to India

-in 1824 he finally left London to voyage India

-first visited Constantinople

-after greeting the Sublime Porte, founded copies of his book

-then to Mount Ararat in modern-day Armenia

-catalogued landscapes on his way

-also general state of region

-travelled southwards overland

-required many sets of interpreters

-to talk to Assyrians he first needed one interpreter to translate his French into Turkish, another to Turkish into Armenian, and finally Armenian into Assyrian

-finally reached Bandar Abbas

-British traders jumped at opportunity to greet him

-on trading vessel, sailed to Calcutta, greeted friend Canning

-who ensured he had complete freedom to travel regardless of East India corporate suspicions

-planned many travels to Himalayas

-first visited Darjeeling

-found temperate weather pleasant

-even as high altitudes caused him to bleed out eyes and nose along the way

-measured heights of various mountains in the area

-travelled as far as possible before it got to him

-trigonometric surveys determined that Dhaulagiri not Chimborazo tallest in the world, wanted to go up it

-gained access to Nepal

-recorded height of mountains near Dhaulagiri with surveying equipment

-catalogued the various plant life he found there

-when couldn't go more, got his aides to collect whatever moss and lichens they could

-and categorized them delicately based on his telescope

-finally travelled southward with all data, specimens, to Calcutta to recover from injuries of high altitude

-escaped British Wars > Popular Revolution disarray (1827-35) aside from some army mutinies

-finally decided to stay closer to sea level

-travelled up the Ganges to record observations

-and collect volumes upon volumes of useful data about every facet of Indian geography, botany, fauna, and climate

-but came face to face with horrors of Indian colonialism

-found it every bit as horrible as that colonialism of Spanish America

-cruel justice system, material poverty, and clear wealth drain

-returned to Europe in 1831

-after 5 years in India

-compared data of Andes, Mount Ararat, and Himalayas

-in a lengthy scientific paper that would go on to be highly significant in the discovery of evolution and Organic Law of Change

-drew famous diagrams of them

-much data to publish, in process that took well after his death

in 1832, wrote and published Political Essay on the Holdings of the Honorable East India Company

-v. critical of colonialism and of the East India Company

-of British administrators forcing starving farmers to grow cash crops, of the regular use of forced labour

-in British Isles, topic of East India administration long a topic of debate

-resulted in the East India Company being entirely removed from any role in administering India

-did not fix abuses, but did diminish debate

-during 1837-1839 Agra Famine, Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell pointed to the Political Essay as proof of abuses that needed to be fixed

-but took Indian reform movements to definitively bring this to surface

-to extent it was found in palms of freedom fighters during the British Wars > Hindustani War of Independence (1936-9)

-though modern Hindustan has torn down and destroyed almost all of the statues of Europeans built by the Britishers, Humboldt not just not done so but treated as nat'l monument

-Humboldt published many books on his India expedition

-on his trips to the Himalayas and on his scientific discoveries

-v. popular in his day

-and made for a good legacy today