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His idea, that the self and nature are in fact identical, was as simple as it was radical.

There is a “secret bond connecting our mind with nature,” the professor, Friedrich Schelling, told the students. At the lectern, a young man lit two candles and the students saw him bathed in light. They jostled for seats, took out ink and quills and waited. Contending with the disruptions of the Napoleonic wars, Humboldt nonetheless made the rounds in Paris, and then was recalled to Berlin, where he served as chamberlain to the Prussian king.As darkness settled over the small German town of Jena in the late winter of 1798, large groups of young men rushed to the town university’s biggest auditorium to listen to their new philosophy professor. He hauled back some 60,000 plant specimens, several thousands of which were unknown to European botanists. His notebooks bulged with astronomical, geologic, and meteorological readings. Humboldt’s South American expeditions yielded an enormous trove of information. In doing so, Wulf writes, “he unwittingly became the father of the environmental movement.” At Lake Valencia, near Caracas, Humboldt observed the effects of deforestation and developed an early notion of the link between people’s activities and climate change. He deplored slavery and the ravages of the plantation economy. Whatever nature’s raw grandeur, Humboldt also saw the worrying hand of humankind at work. At night, as jaguars hunted tapirs, the air was filled with the sounds of “a long-extended and ever-amplifying battle of the animals.” Such views would influence Darwin as he grappled with his theories of evolution. Here, in the thickness of the jungle - the mosquitos were hell - he saw a mixture of harmony and competition, plants battling one another for precious light. With his French scientist companion, Aime Bonpland, he voyaged down the Orinoco River, accompanied, at one point, by a mastiff, eight monkeys, seven parrots, a toucan, and macaw. His explorations of the Americas between 17, which took him from Washington D.C., to Lima, Peru, from hot plains to icy heights, profoundly shaped his vision of nature.

She is at her best in her vivid and exciting chapters describing Humboldt’s epic travels. Wulf knows her subject well, but her book, divided between a biography of his life and sections tracing his influence on Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and others, sometimes feels disjointed.