I’m neck deep in Andrea Wulf‘s biography of Alexander von Humboldt, and it’s absolutely riveting. Von Humboldt was some kind of scientific maniac, who caught the interest of everyone from Goethe to Thomas Jefferson to Simon Bolivar. Von Humboldt was arguably the first naturalist to think ecologically, as well as one of the earliest abolitionists. He didn’t get to go everywhere, and he didn’t get to meet everyone, but damn close.
The Home for Wayward Statisticians 