Baron Friedrich, Heinrich, Alexander von Humboldt, Prussian natural scientist, was born in 1769 in Berlin and died in 1859. He was the brother of Wilhelm von Humboldt, the German dipolmat and learned phililogist and philospher of language.

He was a great traveler, explored America with Bonpland (Journey to the Equinoxial Regions of the New Continent between 1799 and 1804). His second home was France. He came to Paris in 1805 and was elected as an Associate Member of the Academie des Sciences. Among his friends were most of the city's eminent scholars: Achillle Valenciennes, Arago, Gut-Lussa, Cuvier and Latreille. His sovereign however, asked him to return to Berlin in 1827, where he then took on the post of Private Counselor and subsequently had to recognize the new King who had emerged from the July revolution. He undertook his second voyage to Asia on behalf of Car Nicolas I of Russia, the resulting book, Fragments of Geology and Asiatic Climatology, 1832, contributing towards the advance being made in climatology, oceanography and geology.

He also wrote the famous Kosmos ou "Description physique du Monde" in which he summed up the entire human knowledge about Heaven and Earth. Alexander von Humboldt is considered one of the most important scientists of his time. Most of his experiments and expeditions were accomplished with clocks and timepieces which had specially designed for him by BREGUET.