Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a German explorer, naturalist, one of the founders of the modern geography and biogeography, and a philosopher. He was fluent in English, Spanish and French.

Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt traveled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. He collected botanical material and biological species. At the end of his life he accumulated about 60.000 plants, including thousands of species never described before. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years.

Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). He studied the ocean currents of the western coast of South America, known today in his honor as the Humboldt current. He investigated the American volcanoes and recorded their eruptions. He measured the decrease in magnetic intensity, as he went from the poles to the Equator, as well as the rate of the temperature drop with altitude. He observed a rich meteor shower, and his report increased the interest in this phenomenon. He wrote about Indian antiquities and introduced the fertilizing powers of Peruvian guano into Europe. He was the first person to describe the phenomenon and cause of human-induced climate change, in 1800 and again in 1831, based on observations generated during his travels. He was the first to realize the feasibility of the Panama Canal, something that would not come true until after a century had passed. In Ecuador, he climbed the Chimborazo volcano of 6310 meters high, a record that was only improved one generation later. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

During his tour through the American continent, Humboldt visited Cuba twice, in 1800 and 1804. During the initial three-months stay in Cuba, he stayed in the house of the Alejandro de O'Reilly y Mc Docwell. He befriended the Cuban landowner and thinker Francisco de Arango y Parreño and visited with him many places in the island, accompanied also by the talented French botanist and naturalist Aimé Bonpland. During his trips he collected statistical information on Cuba's population, production (particularly sugar production), technology and trade, and made suggestions for enhancing them. In addition, the German scientist presented a thesis on the formation of the Antilles and the constitution of Cuban geology and made a map with accurate measurements of the latitude of several ports and cities, including those of Havana. Upon his return to the Old Continent, he devoted a good part of his time to write the result of his vast and fruitful scientific production.

On their way back to Europe from Mexico, Humboldt and Bonpland stopped again in Cuba in 1804. In Cuba, he collected plant material and made extensive notes. He finished his vast collection of the island's flora and fauna that he eventually published as Essai Politique Sur L'îsle De Cuba (Political Essay on the Island of Cuba) in 1827. Humboldt was credited with the nicknames of "second discoverer of Cuba", as it was a work of extraordinary importance due to the objectivity that made known, for the first time, the nature and society of Cuba to Europeans and Cubans.

The natural park, located in the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountains on the north coast of eastern Cuba, is named Alejandro de Humboldt National Park to honor his memory. It is the largest and best-conserved remnant of forested mountain ecosystems in the Caribbean, and widely considered to be Cuba's most important protected area for its extraordinary biodiversity values.

Alejandro de Humboldt National Park