Latitude: The True Story of the World’s First Scientific Expedition

Summary

Latitude is a gloriously exciting tale of adventure and scientific discovery that has never been told before.

Crane, the former president of the Royal Geographic Society, documents the remarkable expedition undertaken by a group of twelve European adventurer-scientists in the mid-eighteenth century. The team spent years in South America, scaling volcanoes and traversing jungles, before they achieved their goal of establishing the exact shape of the Earth by measuring the length of one degree latitude at the equator.

By knowing the shape of the earth, people can create maps, survive the oceans, navigate the skies, and travel across the globe. Without latitude, maps and navigation would not be accurate, lives would have been lost, and exact locations of cities and rivers would never be known. After ten grueling years in search of a magic number, the survivors returned to Europe with their historical discovery and fueled the public’s interest in science.

Their endeavors were not limited to this one achievement. Not only did their discovery open up the possibility for safe, accurate navigation across the seas, but they also discovered rubber and quinine.

With a narrative that reads like it was taken from the script of an adventure movie, Nicholas Crane shows how scientific discovery can change the world and our future. Filled with raw excitement and danger, Latitude brings to vivid life the challenges that faced these explorer-scientists. 

Years ago, Dava Sobel’s bestselling Longitude was a global publishing phenomenon, yet it told only one half of the story. With Latitude, this cornerstone piece of our shared history is now complete with this account of a trip that changed the course of human civilization.