Alexander von Humboldt: the graphic novel
▻https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00958-5
Four years ago, the historian Andrea Wulf rescued Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) from relative international obscurity with her delightful biography, The Invention of Nature.
To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Humboldt’s birth this year, Wulf has teamed up with artist Lillian Melcher to create The Adventures of #Alexander_von_Humboldt, a graphic work of non-fiction depicting Humboldt’s five-year exploration of Latin America as a young man.
It was a time when scientists had become obsessed with measuring and documenting all aspects of their environment, from human features to the elevation of hills. But no one took investigation of the environment further than Humboldt — and no one thought as seriously about how the measurements could be integrated into a holistic understanding of our globe.
