Domingo 17 de diciembre, a la 1 pm.
Presentación en inglés, del libro HUMBOLDT’S MEXICO. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS GERMAN SCIENTIFIC TRAVELLER de Myron Echenberg. Entrada libre.
In Humboldt’s Mexico, Echenberg plunges into the lifetime of scientific studies that Humboldt packed into that single daunting year. More than that, Echenberg’s treatise involved travelling in Humboldt’s footsteps- in itself a daunting experience.
Humboldt became a major figure in the classical period of physical geography and biogeography- areas of science now included in earth sciences and ecology. Interested in terrestrial magnetism, he contributed significantly to the progress of this science, and was a pioneer in the fields of climatology, meteorology and isoline cartography. He invented weather maps showing isotherms and isobars. He was also the first to observe reverse polarity and to discover a decrease in the planet’s magnetic force from the poles to the Equator. And with his book Kosmos he made a valuable contribution to the popularization of science.
Echenberg sketches these accomplishments as well as Humboldt’s unremarkable early life. A sickly child and poor student, he was the less promising younger brother of the dazzlingly brilliant Wilhelm von Humboldt, who would go on to be a liberal politician and philosopher.
