As Humboldt Fellows we all celebrate Alexander von Humboldt as one of the true pioneers and perhaps one of the last generalists in the natural sciences. His older brother, Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt, born in 1767, was a German linguist and philosopher, a government functionary and diplomat, founder of the Humboldt University in Berlin, and friend of both Goethe and Schiller.(source: www.massey.ac.nz)