Beschrijving
Paris, Gide, 1843, complete in three volumes, lviii,570+558+608 pages, half leather binding, remains of gilt ornaments on spines, spine of volume I loose, foxing in all three volumes, waterstaining throughout volume III, one large folding map and 13 foldout charts in volume III. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt’s quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt’s advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.This work is based on his Russian expedition of 1829. Between May and November 1829 he and the growing expedition traversed the wide expanse of the Russian empire from the Neva to the Yenisei, accomplishing in twenty-five weeks a distance of 15,472 km. Two works were published on this expedition ‘Fragmens de Geologie et de la Climatologie Asiastique’ and this ‘Asie Centrale’. ‘Asie Centrale is dedicated to Czar Nicholas, because ’the expedition was accomplished at his expense’. In French. A very scarce record of this expedition.