View of the volcano Cayambe, in Cordillera Central, Ecuadorian Andes, early 1800s. Between 1799 and 1804, Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time in a manner generally considered to be a modern scientific point of view. His quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. He thought an approach to science was needed that could account for the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world.