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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

Humboldt was a good networker

In 1789, shortly before the French Revolution, at the age of nineteen,
Humboldt became a student at the University of Göttingen and met with Georg
Forster (Wulf, Andrea, 2015: 18), a German naturalist and travel writer who had

been with Captain James Cook on his second voyage. They became friends.
Humboldt took his first sea journey by travelling with Forster to England and
met Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, who accompanied Captain
Cook on his first voyage. At that time Banks’ name was known to sea captains
from all nations due to his global plant-collecting network. Banks became a good
friend and supporter of Humboldt.

Humboldt was a man of the highest intellect. He finished his program of
study at the Mining Academy in Freiberg in eight months, whereas it would
take others three years. As a young scholar, Humboldt published his scientific
2
observations on mineralogy and botany, which caught the attention of Johann
Wolfgang Goethe. They became friends and even conducted experiments on
anatomy and the reaction of muscles to electricity together. Humboldt was then
admitted to a famous group of Weimar intellectuals, of which Goethe and
Schiller were the key figures. Goethe told one of his friends about Humboldt
that “In eight days of reading books, one couldn’t learn as much as what he gives
you in an hour”.
3
Humboldt had made friendships with many of the brightest minds of
his time. He later became the hub of connections of scientists, believing that
knowledge was to be shared, exchanged and made available to everyone. It was
estimated that throughout his life-time he wrote around 50,000 letters to at least
2,500 different persons.
4

Letter from Alexander von Humboldt to Archibald MacLean, 14 October 1791. In: Jahn, Ilse / Lange,
2
Fritz G., 1973. Die Jugendbriefe Alexander von Humboldts 1787-1799, 154, cited in Wulf, ibid., 20
3 Letter from Goethe to Karl August, Duke of Saxe- Weimar, March 1797. In: Ernst und Renate
Grumach (hrsg.), 1965-2000. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Goethe Begegnungen und Gespräche, 288
4 Wulf, op. cit., 3; Schütz, Swantje , Zehn Fakten zu Alexander von Humboldt, [cited 17.12.2019]
<https://www.goethe.de/prj/hya/de/inh/ten.html>, but see also Rooks, Timothy, What’s a
Humboldt: Reflection on the elusive Prussian genius, (DW)): [cited 17.12.2019] <https://www.
dw.com/en/whats-a-humboldt-reflections-on-the-elusive-prussian-genius/a-46693489>, which
estimated that Humboldt wrote around 30,000 letters to at least 2,800 people.

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