“Rupke is right to draw attention to the fact that shifting biographical traditions make one person have many lives, and his metabiography helps us to appreciate the historical instability of any scientific life, not just one as complex as Humboldt’s. . . . Rupke has given us a Humboldt just right for our own less certain and more self-conscious times—fractured, multiple and unstable.”

Steven Shapin | Nature

“Rupke’s study . . . will doubtless become a standard reference for the Humboldt industry and for writers of scientific metabiographies to come.”

Isis

“Engaging. . . . Rupke’s meticulous analysis is fascinating on many scores.”

John Meurig Thomas | Times Higher Education Supplement (UK)

“A study borne of considerable scholarship and one with important methodological implications for historians of geography.”

Charles W. J. Withers | Progress in Human Geography

“The book examines how Humboldt has been portrayed in the biographical literature by his fellow Germans. . . . With each major shift in politics, a new image of Humboldt was created. . . . A marvelously fascinating book.”

Annals of Science

“A detailed, rewarding, and well-illustrated account.”

British Journal for the History of Science