Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (May 28 1807-December 14 1873) was a Swiss-born American zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist, the husband of educator Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, and one of the first world-class American scientists. He was a prominent supporter of polygenism.

Relocation to the United States

In 1842-1846 he issued his Nomenclator Zoologicus, a classified list, with references, of all names employed in zoology for genera and groups--a work of great labour and research. With the aid of a grant of money from the king of Prussia, Agassiz crossed the Atlantic in the autumn of 1846 with the twin purposes of investigating the natural history and geology of the United States and delivering a course of lectures on zoology, by invitation from J. A. Lowell, at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. The financial and scientific advantages presented to him in North America induced him to settle in the United States, where he remained to the end of his life. He was appointed professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University in 1847. In 1852 he accepted a medical professorship of comparative anatomy at Charlestown, Massachusetts, but he resigned in two years. From this time his scientific studies dropped off, but he was a profound influence on the American branches of his two fields, teaching decades worth of future prominent scientists, including David Starr Jordan, Joel Asaph Allen, Joseph Le Conte, Nathaniel Shaler, Alpheus Packard, and his son Alexander Agassiz, among others. He had a profound impact on the paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott. In return his name appears attached to several species, as well as here and there throughout the American landscape, notably Lake Agassiz, the Pleistocene precursor to Lake Winnipeg and the Red River. He was also responsible for building up the Museum of Natural History at Cambridge, and was an early studier of the effect of the last Ice Age on North America.

Related Topics:
1842 - 1846 - Prussia - Atlantic - United States - J. A. Lowell - Lowell Institute - Boston - Massachusetts - North America - Harvard University - 1847 - 1852 - Comparative anatomy - Charlestown, Massachusetts - David Starr Jordan - Joel Asaph Allen - Joseph Le Conte - Nathaniel Shaler - Alpheus Packard - Alexander Agassiz - Charles Doolittle Walcott - Lake Agassiz - Pleistocene - Lake Winnipeg - Red River - Cambridge

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During this time he grew in fame even in the public consciousness, becoming one of the best-known scientists in the world. By 1857 he was so well-loved that Longfellow wrote "The fiftieth birthday of Agassiz" in his honour. His own writing continued with four volumes of Natural History of the United States which were published from 1857 to 1862. During this time he also published a catalog of papers in his field, Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, in four volumes between 1848 and 1854.

Related Topics:
1857 - Longfellow - 1862 - 1848 - 1854

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Stricken by ill health in the 1860s, he resolved to return to the field partly for relaxation, and partly to take up his studies of Brazilian fishes once again. In April 1865 he led a party to Brazil. Returning home in August 1866, an account of this expedition, entitled A Journey in Brazil, was published in 1868. In 1871 he made a second excursion, visiting the southern shores of North America, both on its Atlantic and its Pacific seaboards.

Related Topics:
1860s - 1865 - 1866 - 1868 - 1871

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