Great traveller and naturalist, born in Berlin; devoted all his life to the study of nature in all its departments, travelling all over the Continent, and in 1800, with Aimé Bonpland for companion, visiting S. America, traversing the Orinoco, and surveying and mapping out in the course of five years Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, the results of which he published in his "Travels"; his chief work is the "Kosmos," or an account of the visible universe, in 4 vols., originally delivered as lectures in Paris in the winter of 1827-28; he was a friend of Goethe, who held him in the highest esteem (1769-1859).