About the Author

Nicolaas A. Rupke is professor of the history of science and director of the Institute for the History of Science at Gottingen, Germany. He is the author of several books, including Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist.

Reviews

"Rupke's study... will doubtless become a standard reference for the Humboldt industry and for writers of scientific metabiographies to come." - Isis "Engaging.... Rupke's meticulous analysis is fascinating on many scores." - Times Higher Education Supplement "A study born of considerable scholarship and one with important methodological implications for historians of geography." - Charles W. J. Withers, Progress in Human Geography "Rupke is right to draw attention to the fact that shifting biographical traditions make one person have many lives, and his metabiography helps us to appreciate the historical instability of any scientific life, not just one as complex as Humboldt's.... Rupke has given us a Humboldt just right for our own less certain and more self-conscious times - fractured, multiple and unstable." - Steven Shapin, Nature"