Book Review: The Invention Of Nature by Andrea Wulf

Hardback by John Murray, £25.00 (ebook £16.99)

A polymath, even by the standards of his times (1769-1859), Humboldt’s explorations of South America inspired scientists of subsequent generations, not least Darwin, whose theories owed much to seeds in Humboldt’s works.

He discovered countless new species, but his great gift was for seeing the connections which united them into a whole; he was the first to systematically map the world’s climate zones and identify man-made climate change, and the very word ‘ecology’ was coined by another of his disciples.

Andrea Wulf, who has previously written on gardens and the 1760s transits of Venus, is clearly as passionate about this remarkable man as his peers and successors were, and she does an impressive job of capturing the scale and scope of his achievements.

The subtitle oversells the idea of him as forgotten; mercifully, the book does not, being content to show his significance, rather than unnecessarily fight for it.