Expeditions of German scientist Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt to Latin America from 1799 to 1804 and to Siberia in 1829 greatly advanced the fields of ecology, geology, and meteorology.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt, a naturalist and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, explored. Quantitative botanical work of Humboldt founded biogeography.

Humboldt traveled extensively, explored, and described for the first time in a generally considered modern manner and point of view. He wrote up his description of the journey and published an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He first proposed that forces once joined South America and Africa, the lands, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of knowledge. Humboldt supported, included, and worked with Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, and Matthew Fontaine Maury and most notably conducted much of his exploration with Aimé Bonpland.