Andrea Wulf | |
---|---|
Born | 1967 New Delhi, India |
Occupation | Writer |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Notable works | The Brother Gardeners, This Other Eden, Founding Gardeners, Chasing Venus , The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World |
Andrea Wulf (born 1967) is a German-British historian and writer who has written books, newspaper articles and book reviews.
Wulf was born in New Delhi, India, a child of German developmental aid workers, and spent the first five years of her life there, then grew up in Hamburg. [1] She studied first at the University of Lüneburg, and then design history at The Royal College of Art, London.
Wulf is a public speaker, delivering lectures in the UK and USA. She was the guest speaker at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Her book The Brother Gardeners was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize [2] and received a CBHL Annual Literature Award in 2010. [3] In 2016, she won the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize [4] [5] and the Royal Geographical Society's Ness Award for her book The Invention of Nature. [6]
She was a judge for the 2023 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction. [7]
Chasing Venus: the Race to Measure the Heavens (2012) is a non-fiction book about expeditions of scientists who set off around the world in 1761 and 1769 to collect data relating to the transit of Venus and thereby to measure and understand better the universe. The narrative style provides glimpses into the personalities of those involved, their aims and obsessions, their failures and discoveries, and provides the historic context of the period in the 18th century when modern-day scientifically accurate mapping and international scientific collaboration began. [8]
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (2015) is a nonfiction book about the Prussian naturalist, explorer and geographer Alexander von Humboldt. Wulf makes the case that Humboldt synthesised knowledge from many different fields to form a vision of nature as one interconnected system, that would go on to influence scientists, activists and the public.
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt was a German philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949.
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Sir George William John Benjamin, CBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher. He is well known for operas Into the Little Hill (2006), Written on Skin (2009–2012) and Lessons in Love and Violence (2015–2017)—all with librettos by Martin Crimp. In 2019, critics at The Guardian ranked Written on Skin as the second best work of the 21st-century.
Fiona Elizabeth Bruce is a British journalist, newsreader, and television presenter. She joined the BBC as a researcher for Panorama in 1989, and became the first female newsreader on the BBC News at Ten, as well as presenting many flagship programmes for the corporation, including BBC News at Six, Crimewatch, Real Story, Antiques Roadshow, and Fake or Fortune? Since 10 January 2019, she has been the presenter of the BBC One television programme Question Time.
The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and since it was established in 1988 has championed writers such as Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and Bill Bryson. In 2015 The Guardian described the prize as "the most prestigious science book prize in Britain".
Lake Valencia, formerly Lake Tacarigua, is a lake within Carabobo State and Aragua State in northern Venezuela.
The 2012 transit of Venus, when the planet Venus appeared as a small, dark spot passing across the face of the Sun, began at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and finished at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. Depending on the position of the observer, the exact times varied by up to ±7 minutes. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occur in pairs. Consecutive transits per pair are spaced 8 years apart, and consecutive pairs occur more than a century apart: The previous transit of Venus took place on 8 June 2004 ; the next pair of transits will occur on 10–11 December 2117 and December 2125 within the 22nd century.
Mauritia flexuosa, known as the moriche palm, ité palm, ita, buriti, muriti, miriti (Brazil), canangucho (Colombia), morete or acho (Ecuador), or aguaje (Peru), is a palm tree. It grows in and near swamps and other wet areas in tropical South America.
Bettany Mary Hughes is an English historian, author and broadcaster, specialising in classical history. Her published books cover classical antiquity and myth, and the history of Istanbul. She is active in efforts to encourage the teaching of the classics in UK state schools. Hughes was appointed OBE in 2019.
Timothy Walker HonFRPS is a British fashion photographer who regularly works for Vogue, W and Love magazines. He is based in London.
Eduard Ender was an Austrian painter.
Kate Olivia Malone is a British ceramic artist known for her large sculptural vessels and rich, bright glazes. Malone was previously a judge, along with Keith Brymer Jones, on BBC2's The Great Pottery Throw Down (2015–2017), then presented by Sara Cox.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World is a nonfiction book released in 2015, by the historian Andrea Wulf about the Prussian naturalist, explorer and geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The book follows Humboldt from his early childhood and travels through Europe as a young man to his journey through Latin America and his return to Europe. Wulf makes the case that Humboldt synthesized knowledge from many different fields to form a vision of nature as one interconnected system, that would go on to influence scientists, activists and the public.
Waterperry Gardens are gardens with a museum in the village of Waterperry, near Wheatley, east of Oxford in Oxfordshire, England.
Oobah Butler is an English author and filmmaker. In 2017 he created The Shed at Dulwich, a fictional restaurant which became the top-rated venue in London on TripAdvisor despite having never served a dish. In April 2019, Butler's debut book How to Bullsh*t Your Way To Number 1 was published and became an LA Times bestseller. In 2021, he became co-host of Catfish UK. In 2023 he released his documentary The Great Amazon Heist on Channel 4.
For the Record is a memoir by former British Prime Minister David Cameron, published by William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins UK, on 19 September 2019. It gives an insight into his life at 10 Downing Street, as well as inside explanations of the decisions taken by his government.
Alys Tomlinson is a British photographer. She has published the books Following Broadway (2013), Ex-Voto (2019), Lost Summer (2020) and Gli Isolani (2022). For Ex-Voto she won the Photographer of the Year award at the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. Portraits from Lost Summer won First prize in the 2020 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.
Events from the year 1859 in Germany.
Andreas W. Daum is a German-American historian who specializes in modern German and transatlantic history, as well as the history of knowledge and global exploration.