Humboldtian Imagery and "the Humboldt of Australia"

Abstract

When the great German geographer August Petermann called the botanist/explorer Ferdinand von Mueller "the Humboldt of Australia," what did he have in mind? Elaborating the circumstances of his doing so gives us a new view of Alexander von Humboldt's image among nineteenth-century scientists who declared themselves to be his followers and raises the question of how closely this might have corresponded with the notion of "Humboldtian science" that has been developed by present-day historians of science.