Scientist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt summons the great mathematician Carl Gauss to Berlin before embarking on an ambitious expedition across Russia, determined to measure the world. The story tells of Von Humboldt's focused and robust adventures—as he negotiates savannah and jungle, climbs the highest mountain, counts head lice on native's heads, and explores every hole in the ground—and Gauss, a man born in poverty who will be recognized as the greatest mathematician since Newton and whose greatest trials in life are his wife and that everyone else thinks too slowly.