Louis Agassizby Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/25/20
Louis Agassiz, ForMemRS
Born: May 28, 1807, Haut-Vully, Switzerland
Died: December 14, 1873 (aged 66), Cambridge, Massachusetts
Citizenship: United States
Alma mater: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Known for: Ice age, Polygenism
Spouse(s): Cecilie Braun; Elizabeth Cabot Cary
Children: Alexander, Ida, and Pauline
Awards: Wollaston Medal (1836)
Scientific career
Fields: Paleontology; Glaciology; Geology; Natural history
Institutions: University of Neuchâtel; Harvard University; Cornell University
Doctoral advisor: Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius
Other academic advisors: Ignaz Döllinger, Georges Cuvier, Alexander von Humboldt[1]
Notable students: William Stimpson, William Healey Dall, Carl Vogt[1]
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (/ˈæɡəsi/; French: [aɡasi]; May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a
Swiss biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history. Agassiz grew up in Switzerland. He received
doctor of philosophy and medical degrees at Erlangen and Munich, respectively. After studying with Cuvier and Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. He emigrated to the United States in 1847 after visiting Harvard University. He went on to become
professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, to head its Lawrence Scientific School, and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.Agassiz is known for his regimen of observational data gathering and analysis. He made vast institutional and scientific contributions to zoology, geology, and related areas, including writing multivolume research books running to thousands of pages. He is particularly known for his contributions to ichthyological classification, including of extinct species such as megalodon, and to the study of geological history, including to the founding of glaciology.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Agassiz's resistance to Darwinian evolution,
belief in creationism, and the scientific racism implicit in his writings on human polygenism have tarnished his reputation, and led to controversies over his legacy.
Early lifeFurther information: Agassiz family
Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier (now part of Haut-Vully) in the Swiss canton of Fribourg.
The son of a pastor,[2] Agassiz was educated first at home; he then spent four years of secondary school in Bienne, entering in 1818 and completing his elementary studies in Lausanne. Agassiz s
tudied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and Munich; while there, he extended his knowledge of natural history, especially of botany. In 1829, he
received the degree of doctor of philosophy at Erlangen, and in 1830, that of doctor of medicine at Munich.[3] Moving to Paris, he came under the tutelage of Alexander von Humboldt (and later his financial benevolence).[4]Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a Prussian 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. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern scientific point of view.
His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular).
Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated
a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity. He was the first person to describe the phenomenon and cause of human-induced climate change, in 1800 and again in 1831, based on observations generated during his travels.
-- Alexander von Humboldt, by Wikipedia
Humboldt and Georges Cuvier launched him on his careers of geology and zoology, respectively.
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (French: [kyvje]; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.
Cuvier's work is considered the foundation of vertebrate paleontology, and he expanded Linnaean taxonomy by grouping classes into phyla and incorporating both fossils and living species into the classification. Cuvier is also known for establishing extinction as a fact—at the time, extinction was considered by many of Cuvier's contemporaries to be merely controversial speculation. In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813) Cuvier proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic flooding events. In this way, Cuvier became the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in the early 19th century. His study of the strata of the Paris basin with Alexandre Brongniart established the basic principles of biostratigraphy.
Among his other accomplishments, Cuvier established that elephant-like bones found in the USA belonged to an extinct animal he later would name as a mastodon, and that a large skeleton dug up in Paraguay was of Megatherium, a giant, prehistoric ground sloth. He named the pterosaur Pterodactylus, described (but did not discover or name) the aquatic reptile Mosasaurus, and was one of the first people to suggest the earth had been dominated by reptiles, rather than mammals, in prehistoric times.
Cuvier is also remembered for strongly opposing theories of evolution, which at the time (before Darwin's theory) were mainly proposed by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Cuvier believed there was no evidence for evolution, but rather evidence for cyclical creations and destructions of life forms by global extinction events such as deluges. In 1830, Cuvier and Geoffroy engaged in a famous debate, which is said to exemplify the two major deviations in biological thinking at the time – whether animal structure was due to function or (evolutionary) morphology.[5] Cuvier supported function and rejected Lamarck's thinking.
-- Georges Cuvier, by Wikipedia
Ichthyology soon became a focus of his life's work.[5]
WorkAgassiz in 1870In 1819–1820, German biologists Johann Baptist von Spix and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius undertook an expedition to Brazil. They returned home to Europe with many natural objects, including an important collection of the freshwater fish of Brazil, especially of the Amazon River. Spix, who died in 1826, did not live long enough to work out the history of these fish, and Martius selected Agassiz for this project. Agassiz threw himself into the work with an enthusiasm that would go on to characterize the rest of his life's work. The task of describing the Brazilian fish was completed and published in 1829. This was followed by research into the history of fish found in Lake Neuchâtel. Enlarging his plans, in 1830, he issued a prospectus of a History of the Freshwater Fish of Central Europe. In 1839, however, the first part of this publication appeared, and it was completed in 1842.[3]
In 1832, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. The fossil fish in the rock of the surrounding region, the slates of Glarus and the limestones of Monte Bolca, soon attracted his attention. At the time, very little had been accomplished in their scientific study. Agassiz, as early as 1829, planned the publication of a work, which more than any other, laid the foundation of his worldwide fame.
Five volumes of his Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Research on Fossil Fish) were published from 1833 to 1843. They were magnificently illustrated, chiefly by Joseph Dinkel.[6] In gathering materials for this work, Agassiz visited the principal museums in Europe, and meeting Cuvier in Paris, he received much encouragement and assistance from him.[3] They had known him for seven years at the time.
With Benjamin PeirceAgassiz found that his palaeontological analyses required a new ichthyological classification. The fossils he examined rarely showed any traces of the soft tissues of fish, but, instead, consisted chiefly of the teeth, scales, and fins, with the bones being perfectly preserved in comparatively few instances. He, therefore, adopted a classification that divided fish into four groups: ganoids, placoids, cycloids, and ctenoids, based on the nature of the scales and other dermal appendages. This did much to improve fish taxonomy, but Aggasiz's classification has since been superseded.[3]
Agassiz needed financial support to continue his work. The British Association and the Earl of Ellesmere—then Lord Francis Egerton—stepped in to help. The 1,290 original drawings made for the work were purchased by the Earl, and presented by him to the Geological Society of London. In 1836, the Wollaston Medal was awarded to Agassiz by the council of that society for his work on fossil ichthyology; and, in 1838, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society. Meanwhile, invertebrate animals engaged his attention. In 1837, he issued the "Prodrome" of a monograph on the recent and fossil Echinodermata, the first part of which appeared in 1838; in 1839–40, he published two quarto volumes on the fossil echinoderms of Switzerland; and in 1840–45, he issued his Études critiques sur les mollusques fossiles (Critical Studies on Fossil Mollusks).[3]
Before Agassiz's first visit to England in 1834, Hugh Miller and other geologists had brought to light the remarkable fossil fish of the Old Red Sandstone of the northeast of Scotland. The strange forms of Pterichthys, Coccosteus and other genera were then made known to geologists for the first time. They were of intense interest to Agassiz, and formed the subject of a monograph by him published in 1844–45: Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Grès Rouge, ou Système Dévonien (Old Red Sandstone) des Îles Britanniques et de Russie (Monograph on Fossil Fish of the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian System of the British Isles and of Russia).[3] In the early stages of his career in Neuchatel, Agassiz also made a name for himself as a man who could run a scientific department well. Under his care, the University of Neuchâtel soon became a leading institution for scientific inquiry.
Portrait photograph by John Adams Whipple, circa 1865In 1842–1846, Agassiz issued his Nomenclator Zoologicus, a classification list, with references, of all names used in zoological genera and groups.
Ice ageIn 1837,
Agassiz proposed that the Earth had been subjected to a past ice age.[7] He presented the theory to the Helvetic Society that not only had ancient glaciers flowed outward from the Alps, but even larger glaciers had covered the plains and mountains of Europe, Asia, and North America, smothering the entire Northern Hemisphere in a prolonged ice age. In the same year, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Prior to this proposal, Goethe, de Saussure, Venetz, Jean de Charpentier, Karl Friedrich Schimper, and others had studied the glaciers of the Alps, and Goethe,[8] Charpentier, and Schimper[7] had even concluded that the erratic blocks of alpine rocks scattered over the slopes and summits of the Jura Mountains had been moved there by glaciers. These ideas attracted the attention of Agassiz, and he discussed them with Charpentier and Schimper, whom he accompanied on successive trips to the Alps.
Agassiz even had a hut constructed upon one of the Aar Glaciers, which for a time he made his home, to investigate the structure and movements of the ice.[3]
In 1840, Agassiz published a two-volume work entitled Études sur les glaciers (Studies on Glaciers).[9] In this, he discussed the movements of the glaciers, their moraines, and their influence in grooving and rounding the rocks and in producing the striations and roches moutonnees seen in Alpine-style landscapes. He accepted Charpentier and Schimper's idea that some of the alpine glaciers had extended across the wide plains and valleys of the Aar and Rhône, but he went further, concluding that, in the recent past, Switzerland had been covered with one vast sheet of ice, originating in the higher Alps and extending over the valley of northwestern Switzerland to southern slopes of the Jura. The publication of this work gave fresh impetus to the study of glacial phenomena in all parts of the world.[10]
Familiar, then, with recent glaciation, Agassiz and English geologist William Buckland visited the mountains of Scotland in 1840. There, they found clear evidence in different locations of glacial action. The discovery was announced to the Geological Society of London in successive communications. The mountainous districts of England, Wales, and Ireland were understood to have been centres for the dispersion of glacial debris.
Agassiz remarked, "that great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in Greenland, once covered all the countries in which unstratified gravel (boulder drift) is found; that this gravel was in general produced by the trituration of the sheets of ice upon the subjacent surface, etc."[11]
The man-sized iron auger used by Agassiz to drill up to 7.5 m deep into the Unteraar Glacier to take its temperatureUnited StatesWith the aid of a grant of money from the King of Prussia, Agassiz crossed the Atlantic in the autumn of 1846 to investigate the natural history and geology of North America and to deliver a course of lectures on "The Plan of Creation as shown in the Animal Kingdom,"[12] by invitation from J. A. Lowell, at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.
The monarchs of Prussia were members of the House of Hohenzollern who were the hereditary rulers of the former German state of Prussia from its founding in 1525 as the Duchy of Prussia. The Duchy had evolved out of the Teutonic Order, a Roman Catholic crusader state and theocracy located along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Teutonic Knights were under the leadership of a Grand Master, the last of whom, Albert, converted to Protestantism and secularized the lands, which then became the Duchy of Prussia.
The Duchy was initially a vassal of the Kingdom of Poland, as a result of the terms of the Prussian Homage whereby Albert was granted the Duchy as part of the terms of peace following the Prussian War. When the main line of Prussian Hohenzollerns died out in 1618, the Duchy passed to a different branch of the family, who also reigned as Electors of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire. While still nominally two different territories, Prussia under the suzerainty of Poland and Brandenburg under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire, the two states are known together historiographically as Brandenburg-Prussia.
Following the Second Northern War, a series of treaties freed the Duchy of Prussia from vassalage to any other state, making it a fully sovereign Duchy in its own right. This complex situation (where the Hohenzollern ruler of the independent Duchy of Prussia was also a subject of the Holy Roman Emperor as Elector of Brandenburg) laid the eventual groundwork for the establishment of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. For diplomatic reasons, the rulers of Prussia called themselves King in Prussia from 1701 to 1772. They still nominally owed fealty to the Emperor as Electors of Brandenburg, so the "King in Prussia" title (as opposed to "King of Prussia") avoided offending the Emperor. Additionally, calling themselves "King of Prussia" implied sovereignty over the entire Prussian region, parts of which were still part of Poland.
As the Prussian state grew through several wars and diplomatic moves throughout the 18th century, it became apparent that Prussia had become a Great Power in its own right. By 1772, the pretense was dropped, and the style "King of Prussia" was adopted. The Prussian kings continued to use the title "Elector of Brandenburg" until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, reflecting the legal fiction that their domains within the empire were still under the ultimate overlordship of the Emperor. Legally, the Hohenzollerns ruled Brandenburg in personal union with their Prussian kingdom, but in practice they treated their domains as a single unit. The Hohenzollerns gained de jure sovereignty over Brandenburg when the empire dissolved in 1806, and Brandenburg was formally merged into Prussia.
In 1871, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, the German Empire was formed, and the King of Prussia, Wilhelm I was crowned German Emperor. From that point forward, though the Kingdom of Prussia retained its status as a constituent state of the empire (albeit by far the largest and most powerful), all subsequent Kings of Prussia also served as German Emperor, and that title took precedence.
-- List of monarchs of Prussia, by Wikipedia
Hon. John Amory Lowell (November 11, 1798 – October 31, 1881) was an American businessman and philanthropist from Boston. He became the sole trustee of the Lowell Institute when his first cousin, John Lowell, Jr. (1799–1836), the Institute's endower, died....
His father maintained a well-established law firm in the city, and three years after John Amory's birth, retired for reasons of his failing health. After retiring in 1801, the elder Lowell spent much of his time and wealth patronizing the burgeoning horticultural society in Boston, so much so that he became known to his friends and family as "The Norfolk Farmer." John Amory Lowell's paternal grandfather, also named John Lowell (1743–1802) but referred to as "The Old Judge," was a Federal Judge appointed by President George Washington and is considered to be the founding father of the Boston Lowells. (Greenslet 1946).
Like his father and grandfathers before him, Lowell would be the fourth member in his family line to graduate from Harvard College in 1815, at the age of 17.
After spending an extended time traveling through Europe and then establishing himself as a successful merchant in Boston, Lowell married his first wife, Susan Cabot Lowell (1801–1827), a daughter of his uncle, Francis Cabot Lowell.[3] Together, they would have two children, Susan Cabot and John. Lowell's wife died during childbirth in 1827. Their son, John, would be appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1865 by President Abraham Lincoln, and in 1878, appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court by President Rutherford B. Hayes. John Amory's grandson, James Arnold Lowell, would also go on to become a Federal Judge...
Lowell was a Fellow of Harvard College (1837–1877), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Linnean Society of London. Later, in 1851, Harvard would honor John Amory with an LLD.
The trust—or Lowell Institute, as it came to be known...proved to be an extraordinarily innovative philanthropic force...
The list of Lowell Lecturers during his tenure was a veritable pantheon of the most internationally celebrated figures in science, literature, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology, including Britain's most celebrated geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz, and novelists Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
The lectures were so immensely popular that crowds crushed the windows of the Old Corner Bookstore where the tickets were distributed and certain series had to be repeated by popular demand. John Amory tirelessly led the Lowell Institute for more than 40 years before naming his son, Augustus, as his replacement.
-- John Amory Lowell, by Wikipedia
The financial offers presented to him in the United States induced him to settle there, where he remained to the end of his life.[11] He was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1846.[13] Agassiz had a cordial relationship with Harvard botanist Asa Gray, but they disagreed on some scientific issues.[14] For example,
Agassiz was a member of the Scientific Lazzaroni, a group of mostly physical scientists who wanted American academia to mimic the autocratic academic structures of European universities, whereas Gray was a staunch opponent of that group.
("Lazzaroni" was slang for the homeless idlers of Naples who live by chance work or begging - so called from the Hospital of St Lazarus, which served as their refuge.) These scientists then gained greater support and laid the foundation for the National Academy of Sciences...
These Lazzaroni were mostly professional physical scientists, interested in geophysical problems, who admitted a few kindred souls from other fields to their ranks. Their interests and range of influence extended to all of the sciences and included much of the research performed in universities and the government. They were consciously promoting the development of a professional scientific community in America...
The Lazzaroni wanted to mimic the autocratic academic structures of European universities. The members of the Lazzaroni wanted only university-educated scientists, at one point, so as to create a "pure science" for America. Therefore, the scientists who did not match the code and "oath" of the initial members would be forced, if possible, out of their vocation and not allowed to advance unless they met the qualifications of the Lazzaroni, who often kept scientists out of any professional scientific position. They used their influence together, a group of top scientists against any one individual.
-- Scientific Lazzaroni, by Wikipedia
Agassiz also felt each human race had different origins, but Gray believed in the unity of all humans.[15]
Agassiz's engagement for the Lowell Institute lectures precipitated the establishment, in 1847, of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University [Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences], with Agassiz as its head.[16]
The formation of the Lawrence Scientific School in 1847 marked Harvard's first major effort to provide a formal, advanced education in science and engineering.
The school was named for Massachusetts industrialist and entrepreneur Abbott Lawrence, who donated $50,000 (a then-unprecedented sum) to create the institution. While he did not attend Harvard, he had a long personal history with key faculty members such as Louis Agassiz and understood the value of science and engineering. In the letter that accompanied his gift, Lawrence explained his rationale for forming a school:[7]
But where can we send those who intend to devote themselves to the practical applications of science? Our country abounds in men of action. Hard hands are ready to work upon our hard materials; and where shall sagacious heads be taught to direct those hands?...
In 1891, industrialist Gordon McKay designated the Lawrence Scientific School his beneficiary. In 1906, before the first payment from his bequest, Lawrence's scientific and engineering programs were incorporated into Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The School ceased to exist as an independent entity...
In 1934, the School began offering graduate-level and professional programs in engineering. During World War II, Harvard participated in the V-12 Navy College Training Program to provide training for commissioned officers. In 1942, the undergraduate Department of Engineering Sciences changed to the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics to reflect an increased emphasis on applied physics. Harvard President James Bryant Conant created what was known as "Conant's Arsenal," a research hub for defense-related engineering projects including radar jamming, night vision, aerial photography, sonar, explosives, napalm, and atomic bomb research. One notable project from this era was the Harvard Mark I computer; one of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on March 29, 1944 by John von Neumann, who worked on the Manhattan Project at the time, and needed to determine whether implosion was a viable choice to detonate the atomic bomb that would be used a year later. The Mark I also computed and printed mathematical tables, which had been the initial goal of British inventor Charles Babbage for his "analytical engine."
By 1945, Harvard income from government contracts was $33.5 million, the third highest among U.S. universities.[15] Between 1946 and 1949, the Graduate School of Engineering merged its faculty with the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics into the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
-- Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, by Wikipedia
Harvard appointed him professor of zoology and geology, and he founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology there in 1859, serving as the museum's first director until his death in 1873. During his tenure at Harvard, Agassiz studied the effect of the last ice age on North America.
The Museum of Comparative Zoology, full name "The Louis Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology", often abbreviated simply to "MCZ", is the zoology museum located on the grounds of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of three natural history research museums at Harvard whose public face is the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Harvard MCZ's collections consist of some 21 million specimens, of which several thousand are on rotating display at the public museum...
The Harvard Museum of Natural History is physically connected to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; for visitors, one admission ticket grants access to both museums. The research collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology are not open to the public.
-- Museum of Comparative Zoology, by Wikipedia
Agassiz continued his lectures for the Lowell Institute. In succeeding years, he gave lectures on "Ichthyology" (1847–48 season), "Comparative Embryology" (1848–49), "Functions of Life in Lower Animals" (1850–51), "Natural History" (1853–54), "Methods of Study in Natural History" (1861–62), "Glaciers and the Ice Period" (1864–65), "Brazil" (1866–67), and "Deep Sea Dredging" (1869–70).[17] In 1850, he married an American college teacher, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, who later wrote introductory books about natural history and a lengthy biography of her husband after he died.[18]
Agassiz served as a nonresident lecturer at Cornell University while also being on faculty at Harvard.[19] In 1852, he accepted a medical professorship of comparative anatomy at Charlestown, Massachusetts, but resigned in two years.[11] From this time, Agassiz's, scientific studies dropped off, but he became one of the best-known scientists in the world. By 1857, Agassiz was so well-loved that his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "The fiftieth birthday of Agassiz" in his honor, and read it at a dinner given for Agassiz by the Saturday Club in Cambridge.[11] His own writing continued with four (of a planned 10) volumes of Natural History of the United States, published from 1857 to 1862. He also published a catalog of papers in his field, Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, in four volumes between 1848 and 1854.
Stricken by ill health in the 1860s, Agassiz resolved to return to the field for relaxation and to resume his studies of Brazilian fish. In April 1865, he led a party to Brazil. Following his return in August 1866, an account of this expedition, entitled A Journey in Brazil, was published in 1868. In December 1871, he made a second eight-month excursion, known as the Hassler expedition under the command of Commander Philip Carrigan Johnson (brother of Eastman Johnson), visiting South America on its southern Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. The ship explored the Magellan Strait, drawing the praise of Charles Darwin.
Elizabeth Agassiz wrote, at the Strait: '. ... .the Hassler pursued her course, past a seemingly endless panorama of mountains and forests rising into the pale regions of snow and ice, where lay glaciers in which every rift and crevasse, as well as the many cascades flowing down to join the waters beneath, could be counted as she steamed by them. ... These were weeks of exquisite delight to Agassiz. The vessel often skirted the shore so closely that its geology could be studied from the deck.'
LegacyAgassiz in middle ageFrom his first marriage to Cecilie Bruan, Agassiz had two daughters in addition to son Alexander.[20] In 1863, Agassiz's daughter Ida married Henry Lee Higginson, who later founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was a benefactor to Harvard and other schools. On November 30, 1860, Agassiz's daughter Pauline was married to Quincy Adams Shaw (1825–1908), a wealthy Boston merchant and later benefactor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.[21]
In the last years of his life, Agassiz worked to establish a permanent school where zoological science could be pursued amid the living subjects of its study. In 1873, a private philanthropist (John Anderson) gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts (south of New Bedford), and presented him with $50,000 to permanently endow it as a practical school of natural science, especially devoted to the study of marine zoology.[11] The John Anderson school collapsed soon after Agassiz's death; it is considered a precursor of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, which is nearby.[22]
Agassiz had a profound influence on the American branches of his two fields, teaching many future scientists who would go on to prominence, including Alpheus Hyatt, David Starr Jordan, Joel Asaph Allen, Joseph Le Conte, Ernest Ingersoll, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathaniel Shaler, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Alpheus Packard, and his son Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, among others. He had a profound impact on paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott and natural scientist Edward S. Morse. Agassiz had a reputation for being a demanding teacher. He would allegedly "lock a student up in a room full of turtle-shells, or lobster-shells, or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained."[23] Two of Agassiz's most prominent students detailed their personal experiences under his tutelage: Scudder, in a short magazine article for Every Saturday,[24] and Shaler, in his Autobiography.[25] These and other recollections were collected and published by Lane Cooper in 1917,[26] which Ezra Pound was to draw on for his anecdote of Agassiz and the sunfish.[27]
In the early 1840s, Agassiz named two fossil fish species after Mary Anning —Acrodus anningiae, and Belenostomus anningiae— and another after her friend, Elizabeth Philpot. Anning was a paleontologist known around the world for important finds, but because of her gender, she was often not formally recognized for her work. Agassiz was grateful for the help the women gave him in examining fossil fish specimens during his visit to Lyme Regis in 1834.[28]
Agassiz died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1873 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, joined later by his wife. His monument is a boulder from a glacial moraine of the Aar near the site of the old Hôtel des Neuchâtelois, not far from the spot where his hut once stood; his grave is sheltered by pine trees from his old home in Switzerland.[11]
The Cambridge elementary school north of Harvard University was named in his honor and the surrounding neighborhood became known as "Agassiz" as a result. The school's name was changed to the Maria L. Baldwin School on May 21, 2002, due to concerns about Agassiz's involvement in scientific racism, and to honor Maria Louise Baldwin the African-American principal of the school, who served from 1889 until 1922.[29][30] The neighborhood, however, continues to be known as Agassiz.[31] An elementary school called the Agassiz Elementary School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, existed from 1922 to 1981.[32]
Agassiz's grave, Mt Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a boulder from the moraine of the Aar Glaciers, near where he once lived.An ancient glacial lake that formed in the Great Lakes region of North America, Lake Agassiz, is named after him, as are Mount Agassiz in California's Palisades, Mount Agassiz, in the Uinta Mountains, Agassiz Peak in Arizona, and in his native Switzerland, the Agassizhorn in the Bernese Alps. Agassiz Glacier (Montana) and Agassiz Creek in Glacier National Park and Agassiz Glacier (Alaska) in Saint Elias Mountains, Mount Agassiz in Bethlehem, New Hampshire in the White Mountains also bear his name. A crater on Mars Crater Agassiz[33] and a promontorium on the moon are also named in his honor. A headland situated in Palmer Land, Antarctica, is named in his honor, Cape Agassiz. A main-belt asteroid named 2267 Agassiz is also named in association with Louis Agassiz.
Several animal species are named in honor of Louis Agassiz, including Apistogramma agassizii Steindachner, 1875 (Agassiz's dwarf cichlid); Isocapnia agassizi Ricker, 1943 (a stonefly); Publius agassizi (Kaup, 1871) (a passalid beetle); Xylocrius agassizi (LeConte, 1861) (a longhorn beetle); Exoprosopa agassizii Loew, 1869 (a bee fly); Chelonia agassizii Bocourt, 1868 (Galápagos green turtle);[34] Philodryas agassizii (Jan, 1863) (a South American snake);[34] and the most well-known, Gopherus agassizii (Cooper, 1863) (the desert tortoise).[34]. More recently in 2020, a new genus of pycnodont fish (Actinopterygii, Pycnodontiformes) named Agassazilia erfoundina (Cooper and Martill, 2020) from the Moroccan Kem Kem Group was named in honor of Agassiz who first identified the group in the 1830s.
In 2005, the European Geosciences Union Division on Cryospheric Sciences established the Louis Agassiz Medal, awarded to individuals in recognition of their outstanding scientific contribution to the study of the cryosphere on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system.[35]
Agassiz took part in a monthly gathering called the Saturday Club at the Parker House, a meeting of Boston writers and intellectuals. He was, therefore, mentioned in a stanza of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. poem "At the Saturday Club":
There, at the table's further end I see
In his old place our Poet's vis-à-vis,
The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square,
In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair
...
How will her realm be darkened, losing thee,
Her darling, whom we call our AGASSIZ!
The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-Nineteenth Century.
The club began meeting informally at the Albion House in Boston. Publishing agent and lawyer Horatio Woodman first suggested the gatherings among his friends for food and conversation. By 1856, the organization became more structured with a loose set of rules, with monthly meetings held over dinner at the Parker House. The Parker House served as their place of meeting for many years. It was a hotel built in 1854 by Harvey D. Parker.
The gatherings led to the creation of the Atlantic Monthly, to which many of the members contributed. The name was suggested by early member Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[5]
The original members of the group included Woodman, Louis Agassiz, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and James Russell Lowell. In the following years, membership was extended to Holmes, Cornelius Conway Felton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Hickling Prescott. Other members included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Asa Gray, John Lothrop Motley, Benjamin Peirce, Charles Sumner, John Greenleaf Whittier, and others. Invitations to the group were considered a sort of affirmation of acceptance into Boston's high society. Ohio-native William Dean Howells was invited by James Russell Lowell in 1860 and recalled in a memoir that it seemed like a rite of passage. Holmes joked that Howells's presence serve as "something like the apostolic succession... the laying on of hands". A few years later, Howells was named editor of the Atlantic Monthly, which published many of the works by members of the group.
-- Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts), by Wikipedia
Daguerreotypes of Renty and Delia TaylorRentyIn 1850 Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes, described as "haunting and voyeuristic" of the enslaved Renty Taylor and Taylor's daughter Delia to further his arguments about black inferiority.[36] They are the earliest known photographs of slaves.[37][38][36][39] Agassiz left the images to Harvard and they remained in the Peabody Museum’s attic until 1976 when they were re-discovered by Ellie Reichlin. In 2019 Taylor's descendants sued Harvard for the return of the images and unspecified damages.[40] The lawsuit was supported by forty-three living descendants of Louis Agassiz, they wrote a letter of support that read in part "For Harvard to give the daguerreotypes to Ms. Lanier and her family would begin to make amends for its use of the photos as exhibits for the white supremacist theory Agassiz espoused,” and that everyone must evaluate fully "his role in promoting a pseudoscientific justification for white supremacy."[37]PolygenismAfter the 1906 San Francisco earthquake toppled Agassiz's statue from the façade of Stanford's zoology building, Stanford President David Starr Jordan wrote, "Somebody—Dr. Angell, perhaps—remarked that 'Agassiz was great in the abstract but not in the concrete.'"[41]After Agassiz came to the United States,
he wrote prolifically on polygenism, which holds that animals, plants, and humans were all created in "special provinces" with distinct populations of species created in and for each province, and that these populations were endowed with unequal attributes.[42] Agassiz denied that migration and adaptation could account for the geographical age or any of the past. Adaptation takes time; in an example, Agassiz questioned how plants or animals could migrate through regions they were not equipped to handle.[43] According to Agassiz the conditions in which particular creatures live "are the conditions necessary to their maintenance, and what among organized beings is essential to their temporal existence must be at least one of the conditions under which they were created".[43]
Agassiz was opposed to monogenism and evolution, believing that the theory of evolution reduced the wisdom of God to an impersonal materialism.[43]
Agassiz was influenced by philosophical idealism and the scientific work of Georges Cuvier. Agassiz believed one species of humans exists, but many different creations of races occurred.[43] These ideas are now included under the rubric of scientific racism. According to Agassiz, genera and species were ideas in the mind of God; their existence in God's mind prior to their physical creation meant that God could create humans as one species, yet in several distinct and geographically separate acts of creation. Agassiz was in modern terms a creationist who believed nature had order because God created it directly. Agassiz viewed his career in science as a search for ideas in the mind of the creator expressed in creation.
Agassiz, like other polygenists, believed the Book of Genesis recounted the origin of the white race only and that the animals and plants in the Bible refer only to those species proximate and familiar to Adam and Eve. Agassiz believed that the writers of the Bible knew only of regional events; for example that Noah's flood was a local event known only to the regions near those populated by ancient Hebrews.[43]Stephen Jay Gould asserted that Agassiz's observations sprang from racist bias, in particular from his revulsion on first encountering African-Americans in the United States.[44] However,
others have asserted that, despite favoring polygenism, Agassiz rejected racism and believed in a spiritualized human unity.[43] Agassiz believed God made all men equal, and that intellectualism and morality, as developed in civilization, make men equal before God.[43] Agassiz never supported slavery and claimed his views on polygenism had nothing to do with politics;[45] however his views on polygenism emboldened proponents of slavery.[37]Accusations of racism against Agassiz have prompted the renaming of landmarks, schoolhouses, and other institutions (which abound in Massachusetts) that bear his name.[30] Opinions on these events are often mixed, given his extensive scientific legacy in other areas.[46] In 2007,
the Swiss government acknowledged his "racist thinking," but declined to rename the Agassizhorn summit.[47] In 2017, the Swiss Alpine Club declined to revoke Agassiz's status as a member of honor, which he received in 1865 for his scientific work, because the club considered this status to have lapsed on Agassiz's death.[48]
Works• Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (1833–1843)
• History of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe (1839–1842)
• Études sur les glaciers (1840)
• Études critiques sur les mollusques fossiles (1840–1845)
• Nomenclator Zoologicus (1842–1846)
• Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge, ou Systeme Devonien (Old Red Sandstone) des Iles Britanniques et de Russie (1844–1845)
• Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae (1848)
• (with A. A. Gould) Principles of Zoology for the use of Schools and Colleges (Boston, 1848)
• Lake Superior: Its Physical Character, Vegetation and Animals, compared with those of other and similar regions (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1850)
• Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1857–1862)
• Geological Sketches (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866)
• A Journey in Brazil (1868)
• De l'espèce et de la classification en zoologie [Essay on classification] (Trans. Felix Vogeli. Paris: Bailière, 1869)
• Geological Sketches (Second Series) (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1876)
• Essay on Classification, by Louis Agassiz (1962, Cambridge)
See also• Biography portal
• Geology portal
• Category:Taxa named by Louis Agassiz
• List of geologists
References1. Nicolaas A Rupke, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography, University of Chicago Press, 2008, p 54
2. Frank Leslie's new family magazine v 1 (1857), p 29
3. Woodward 1911, p 367
4. Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World New York: Alfred A Knopf 2015, p 250
5. Kelly, Howard A ; Burrage, Walter L , eds (1920) "Agassiz, Jean Louis Rudolph" American Medical Biographies Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company
6. "Agassiz's Fossil Fish" The Geological Society
7. E P Evans: "The Authorship of the Glacial Theory", North American review Volume 145, Issue 368, July 1887 Accessed on January 24, 2018
8. Cameron, Dorothy (1964) Early discoverers XXII, Goethe-Discoverer of the ice age Journal of glaciology (PDF)
9. Louis Agassiz: Études sur les glaciers, Neuchâtel 1840 Digital book on Wikisource Accessed on February 25, 2008
10. Woodward 1911, pp 367–368
11. Woodward 1911, p 368
12. Smith, p 52
13. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A" (PDF) American Academy of Arts and Sciences Retrieved April 6, 2011
14. Dupree, A Hunter (1988) Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press pp 152–154, 224–225 ISBN 978-0-801-83741-8
15. Dupree, A Hunter (1988) Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press pp ix–xv, 152–154, 224–225 ISBN 978-0-801-83741-8
16. Smith (1898), pp 39–41
17. Smith (1898), pp 52–66
18. Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary (1893) Louis Agassiz; his life and correspondence MBLWHOI Library Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company
19. A History of Cornell by Morris Bishop (1962), p 83
20. Irmscher, Christoph (2013) Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
21. Museum of Fine Arts (1918) "Quincy Adams Shaw Collection" Boston, Massachusetts: Museum of Fine Arts: 2
22. Dexter, R W (1980) "The Annisquam Sea-side Laboratory of Alpheus Hyatt, Predecessor of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, 1880–1886" In Sears, Mary; Merriman, Daniel (eds ) Oceanography: The Past New York: Springer pp 94–100 doi:10 1007/978-1-4613-8090-0_10 ISBN 978-1461380900 OCLC 840282810
23. James, William "Louis Agassiz, Words Spoken at the Reception of the American Society of Naturalists [Dec 30, 1896] pp 9–10 Cambridge, 1897 Quoted in Cooper 1917, pp 61–62
24. Erlandson, David A ; et al (1993) Doing Naturalistic Inquiry: A Guide to Methods Sage Publications pp 1–4 ISBN 978-0803949386 ; Originally published in: Scudder, Samuel H (April 4, 1874) "Look at your fish" Every Saturday 16: 369–370
25. Shaler, Nathaniel; Shaler, Sophia Penn Page (1909) The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler with a Supplementary Memoir by his Wife Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company pp 92–99
26. Cooper, Lane (1917) Louis Agassiz as a Teacher: Illustrative Extracts on his Method of Instruction Ithaca: The Comstock Publishing Company
27. Pound, Ezra (2010) ABC of Reading New York: New Directions pp 17–18 ISBN 978-0811218931
28. Emling 2009, pp 169–170
29. [1][permanent dead link]
30. "Committee Renames Local Agassiz School | News | The Harvard Crimson" www thecrimson com
31. "Archived copy" (PDF) Archived from the original on June 7, 2010 Retrieved October 3, 2005 cambridgema gov
32. "Agassiz" mpshistory mpls k12 mn us Retrieved July 6, 2017
33. Schmadel, Lutz D (2012) Dictionary of Minor Planet Names Springer Science & Business Media p 176 ISBN 978-3642297182
34. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011) The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press xiii + 296 pp ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5 ("Agassiz, J L R ", p 2)
35. "Louis Agassiz Medal" European Geosciences Union 2005 Retrieved February 8, 2015
36. "Who Should Own Photos of Slaves? The Descendants, not Harvard, a Lawsuit Says" March 20, 2019 Retrieved March 29, 2019
37. Moser, Erica "Descendants of racist scientist back Norwich woman in fight over slave images" theday com The Day Retrieved June 21, 2019
38. Browning, Kellen "Descendants of slave, white supremacist join forces on Harvard's campus to demand school hand over 'family photos'" www bostonglobe com The Boston Globe Retrieved June 21, 2019
39. "The World Is Watching: Woman Suing Harvard for Photos of Enslaved Ancestors Says History Is At Stake" Democracy Now! March 29, 2019 Retrieved March 29, 2019
40. Tony Marco, Ray Sanchez and "The descendants of slaves want Harvard to stop using iconic photos of their relatives" /www cnn com CNN Retrieved June 21, 2019
41. "Earthquake impacts on prestige" Stanford University and the 1906 earthquake Stanford University Retrieved June 22, 2012
42. Edward Lurie, "Louis Agassiz and the Races of Man," Isis 45, no 3 (1954): 227–242
43. Paul M Blowers, 2008, "Entering 'This Sublime and Blessed Amphitheatre': Contemplation of Nature and Interpretation of the Bible in the Patristic Period, In "Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700", 2 vols (Scott Mandelbrote & Jitse van der Meer, Eds ), doi:10 1163/ej 9789004171916 i-782, book ISBN 9789047425236, pp 147–176, esp 159–164 and 151–154, chapter doi:10 1163/ej 9789004171916 i-782 34}, accessed June 8, 2014
44. Gould, Stephen Jay (1980) "Flaws in a Victorian Veil, Chapter 16" The Panda's Thumb
45. John P Jackson, Nadine M Weidman Race, Racism, and science: social impact and interaction, Rutgers University Press, 2005, p 51
46. See for instance: Author needed, 2001, "Political Correctness Run Amok: School Students Dishonor a Genius of Science", Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no 32 (Summer 2001): 74–75
47. "Louis Agassiz vom Sockel holen und dem Sklaven Renty die Würde zurückgeben" Die Bundesversammlung – Das Schweizer Parlament September 14, 2007
48. "Louis Agassiz ne sera pas déchu de son titre au Club alpin suisse" Le Temps (in French) August 23, 2017 Retrieved August 23, 2017
Sources• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Woodward, Horace Bolingbroke (1911). "Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 367–368.
• Dexter, R W (1979). "The impact of evolutionary theories on the Salem group of Agassiz zoologists (Morse, Hyatt, Packard, Putnam)". Essex Institute Historical Collections. 115 (3). pp. 144–71. PMID 11616944.
• Emling, Shelley (2009). The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman whose Discoveries Changed the World. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-61156-6.
• Irmscher, Christoph (2013). Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0547577678.
• Lurie, E (1954). "Louis Agassiz and the races of Man". Isis; an International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences. 45 (141) (published September 1954). pp. 227–42. PMID 13232804.
• Lurie, Edward (1988). Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0801837432.
• Lurie, Edward (2008). "Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe". Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 72–74.
• Mackie, G O (1989). "Louis Agassiz and the discovery of the coelenterate nervous system". History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. 11 (1). pp. 71–81. PMID 2573108.
• Menand, Louis (2002). "Agassiz". The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. Macmillan. pp. 97–116. ISBN 978-0374528492.
• Numbers, Ronald L. (2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (2nd ed.).[full citation needed]
• Rogers, Molly (2010). Delia's Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300115482.
• Smith, Harriet Knight, The history of the Lowell Institute, Boston: Lamson, Wolffe and Co., 1898.
• Winsor, M P (1979). "Louis Agassiz and the species question". Studies in History of Biology. 3. pp. 89–138. PMID 11610990.
• Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). "Agassiz, Jean Louis Rudolphe" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
External links• Publications by and about Louis Agassiz in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
• Works by Louis Agassiz at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Louis Agassiz at Internet Archive
• Works by Louis Agassiz at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Louis Agassiz online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
• Weisstein, Eric Wolfgang (ed.). "Agassiz, Jean (1807–1873)". ScienceWorld.
• Pictures and texts of Excursions et séjours dans les glaciers et les hautes régions des Alpes and of Nouvelles études et expériences sur les glaciers actuels by Louis Agassiz can be found in the database VIATIMAGES.
• "Geographical Distribution of Animals", by Louis Agassiz (1850)
• Runner of the Mountain Tops: The Life of Louis Agassiz, by Mabel Louise Robinson (1939) – free download at A Celebration of Women Writers – UPenn Digital Library
• Thayer Expedition to Brazil, 1865–1866 (Agassiz went to Brazil to find glacial boulders and to refute Darwin. Dom Pedro II gave his support for Agassiz's expedition on the Amazon River.)
• Louis Agassiz Correspondence, Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Illustrations from 'Monographies d'échinodermes vivans et fossiles'
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
• Agassiz, Louis (1842) "The glacial theory and its recent progress" The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. 33. p. 217–283. (Linda Hall Library)
• Agassiz, Louis (1863) Methods of study in natural history – (Linda Hall Library)
• Agassiz Rock, Edinburgh – during a visit to Edinburgh in 1840, Agassiz explained the striations on this rock's surface as due to glaciation